


Doomed to Repeat

by wesleyfanfiction_archivist



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-05
Updated: 2005-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 08:26:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7094221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wesleyfanfiction_archivist/pseuds/wesleyfanfiction_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of "Double or Nothing" Wesley is cast off from his friends, still reeling from the consequences of his actions, and at a loss as to what to do next. When a rare book  accidentally falls into his possession, he gets caught up in a series of events dating back to the dawn of man. He'd scream if he could.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Versaphile, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [WesleyFanfiction.net](http://fanlore.org/wiki/WesleyFanFiction.Net). Deciding that it needed to have a more long-term home, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in February 2016. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact the e-mail address on [WesleyFanfiction.net collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/wesleyfanfiction/profile).

A/N: This was written for the "Escape from LA" ficathon, hosted by Pam, which can be found [here](http://www.livejournal.com/users/versaphile/1231206.html).

Doomed to Repeat  
 _by: DangerMouse_  


Surreal, walking back into the place he once called home, the heavy box in his hands falling from nerveless fingers as he slumped tiredly against the doorjamb. The room was dark, the lights off just as when he walked out the door that fateful day, never intending to return. His notes were still scattered across his desk, maybe as a silent plea, an unspoken explanation and apology meant for his friends to find upon the discovery of his and Connor's absence. Everything in the small flat was more or less untouched, though a few things looked out of place.

His chair was moved, not quite pushed under the desk like before, and maybe his notes and papers were a little more scattered than he remembered leaving them. Fred and Gunn probably came here, looking through his things in an attempt to understand his motives. Fred did say she found his notes on the prophecy. He wondered idly if Angel came into this place while he lay in the hospital, but part of him doubted it. The room wouldn't be nearly as neat, the entire place torn apart, if that were the case.

Reaching out his hand, Wesley flipped the switch to turn on the hallway light, looking at it in numbed confusion when nothing happened. He stared up at the dark light fixture, eyebrows coming together. Could it have possibly burned out? Frowning, Wesley crossed the room, only stumbling once over the box of his things, and tried to turn on the lamp. Again, nothing happened.

His eyes drifted across the dim room over to his messy desk. Right there on top of the pile sat his electric bill, unopened, forgotten, along with his bills for water, cable, telephone, and gas. Right. He never bothered to pay them, seeing as how he didn't plan on remaining in the area. Come to think of it, he didn't pay his rent, either.

Turning around, he saw a white envelope on the floor in front of the door and he walked over and picked it up. Unadorned, save for his apartment number scrawled sloppily across the front, Wesley ripped it open, taking out the single piece of paper and reading it in the light from the hallway. A notice to vacate, a simple form letter with his name and other appropriate information written in the blanks. According to the document, he had to be out of the apartment by the day after tomorrow, letters had been sent to various collection agencies, and he owed them a substantial sum of money for breaking his lease.

Calmly, Wesley ripped the letter in half once, then again, and again, until all that remained of it were little squares of paper. He dropped it, watching the pieces flutter to the floor around his feet. Closing the door, not bothering to lock it, he walked across the apartment once more, detecting the faint scent of rotting things coming from the refrigerator.

It added an appropriate amount of ambience to the place, so dark, dreary, dismal, and all matter of other depressing 'd' words. The apartment suited Wesley's mood remarkably well. After all, everything else was going wrong.

On a whim, he opened up the drawer of his desk, taking out his cell phone. He'd turned it off before he left it behind and, sure enough, when he pressed the power button, it chirped to life. At least that was on automatic bill pay. A friendly message popped up on the screen informing him he had twenty-seven new voice messages. He dismissed the alert, having no desire to listen to them. Perhaps on a day when he was feeling even worse, he'd subject himself to that abuse.

He started to set the phone down when it rang, jarring the silence in the room, an odd rap ringtone singing out and breaking the quiet. Wesley gave a pained smile at that, remembering the previous year when Gunn had sneaked that onto his phone when he wasn't paying attention. He'd never gotten around to changing the ring, as it was usually on vibrate mode anyway.

The pained smile turned into a grimace when he recognized the number. He didn't have to answer it. He could just turn the phone off, drop it on the floor, and stomp on it a few times for good measure. Halfway to doing just that, his body reacted in the completely opposite direction, his thumb jamming on the answer button, raising the tiny thing to his ear.

The word that slipped from his lips might have been hello, but it didn't come out quite right. His voice, scratchy and rough, didn't sound remotely human, hardly demon for that matter. As though a cheese grater had been shoved down his throat then pulled back up again several times, the words wouldn't form and he remembered belatedly that his doctor instructed him not to attempt to speak for quite sometime.

"What was that?" demanded the prim, short, slightly irritated voice on the other line. "Wesley, did you just wake up? Good lord, it's mid-afternoon. When did you grow so lazy?"

His father. Wesley opened his mouth and closed it again several times, at a loss. The doctor mentioned no talking, but he didn't say exactly what to do in the interim. E-mail, perhaps? But his father despised e-mail.

"Fine, don't speak then," his father carried on, sounding more aggrieved by the minute. "You do know your mother's birthday was last week? I suppose you were too busy running that little company of yours with that vampire to bother yourself with the people who raised and cared for you all through childhood. It's disgraceful. She cried. I hope you're pleased with yourself."

Well, no, he hadn't forgotten his mother's birthday, but he'd been so hopped up on painkillers and out of his mind in agony following his surgery, he didn't quite have the time to nip out and buy a card. Add in his desperation to save Angel's child in the weeks before, his growing terror at the prophecy that kept translating the same way no matter how many times he tried to look at it in a different angle, and his mind had been far from birthdays and distant family that didn't care for him much. He did intend to send a card, though, at the very least, not that he could tell his father as much at the moment.

"What the silent treatment?" His father made a noise of disgust. "Very well. Act like a spoiled child. I should have known better than to expect something mature from you. You never did seem to want to grow up. Sorry we bothered you."

The phone call ended with an exaggerated slam on the other end and Wesley pulled the phone away, looking down at it with a blank expression on his face. Shrugging, he turned it off and put it back inside the drawer. Stomping on it might be relaxing, but he'd probably annoy the neighbors, who would alert the management office, who would send somebody down to demand money he didn't possess.

Letting out a sigh he wished was a scream, Wesley picked his way through the darkened room toward his bedroom. Sudden exhaustion claimed him and he reached out his hands, feeling his way around furniture until he found his bed and collapsed upon it, kicking off his shoes almost as an afterthought. He could have opened a shade, he knew, used the sunlight from outside to guide his steps, but he preferred the dark.

# # # # # #

A loud pounding noise forced him awake and Wesley sat up with a start, blinking in blurred confusion. His hand automatically reached out to the nightstand, fingers wrapping around a spare set of glasses, which he slid up his nose. The pounding increased in both volume and intensity and Wesley dragged himself out of bed, trying to figure out where it was coming from.

A quick glance at the window told him it was mid-morning. He'd slept all afternoon, through the evening, and well into the next day, apparently. Strange, that, as it only felt like he'd closed his eyes seconds before, no dreams haunting his rest, such as it was. He didn't feel rested at all, actually.

Rubbing at his aching head, Wesley staggered out of the bedroom. The pain medication the doctor gave him had clearly worn off, a sort of agony radiating from his throat unlike anything he'd ever suffered. Even being shot in the gut was less painful than this particular injury. It hurt to swallow, hurt to even blink, and the bile rising up the back of his throat in response to that terrible pain did nothing to alleviate it. On top of everything else, he was hungry, but there was nothing still good in the warm refrigerator and nothing in the cupboards he could force past the angry scar tissue. Not his best morning, by far.

On his way to answer the door, he paused at the box still on the floor, reaching down and digging through it. At last, his hand wrapped around a tiny bottle of pills and he swallowed two of them dry, not an easy task by any means. Then, he kicked the box out of the way and grabbed the doorknob.

When he opened the door to his apartment and saw the person reasonable for the pounding, he knew it wasn't going to get much better. Mrs. Peddelem, the woman who ran the apartment complex, struck him as kind and cheerful the many times he'd interacted with her. She'd seemed delighted the day he walked into her office to inquire about available apartments, shaking her hand and on his best behavior. She once told him he was quite the relief given the sort of wild kids that tended to rent and wreck the place. Ever since the incident with his shot up apartment last year, however, some of that friendliness had been replaced by wariness, even though Gunn had managed all the repairs and made the place better than it looked when he moved in.

Now, however, all that cheerful, friendly, mothering was gone, her expression tight and angry. Her lips were pressed into a thin line and she swept past him into the apartment, looking over the general disrepair of the place and the fine dust covering all the furnishings, her nose turning up at the faint scent of rot coming from the kitchen. She glanced down at the torn up bits of his Notice to Vacate with a narrowing of her eyes.

"Mr. Wyndham-Pryce," she said, her voice like ice. "I've let quite a bit slide with you since you've moved in, but this is the last straw. Your rent is overdue and you've ignored every attempt I've made to contact you. I'm at my wits end, Mr. Wyndham-Pryce and I'm afraid I have to evict you for a more... reliable tenet."

Wesley opened his mouth to reply, then closed it and tilted his head up, pointing to his throat. With great exaggeration, he mouthed the word 'hospital', hoping she would understand. True, he didn't have the rent money, but maybe she would forgive him enough to let him slide until he could find away to pay her back proper?

Her expression grew, if possible, darker, and Wesley knew then the answer to his unspoken question was 'probably not'.

"I don't care anymore," she said harshly, making fierce hand motions at the same time. "I should have forced you out when you wrecked the walls with a shotgun! Add in strange people coming in and out at all hours of the night, people reporting the sounds of fighting through the walls, and that's it! I've had it! You're out of here! Be somebody else's problem!"

She stomped back to the door, her hand grabbing the knob hard. "Be out by tomorrow! The apartment better be spotless and you're not getting back your deposit!" She left the room, slamming the door hard behind her.

Wesley stared at the closed door, then took off his glasses and cleaned them, even though they didn't need cleaning. It was something to do, something to occupy his hands, a chance for the world to be blind and fuzzy, forcing him to look down, giving him time to think during which no one could look in his eyes and see what he was thinking. Granted, there was nobody in the room at the moment, except ghosts and memories, but it still felt necessary.

Putting his glasses back on, he looked around the apartment, a kind of hopelessness taking up residence in his stomach. Out by tomorrow? Spotless? Achieving both of those things was impossible and Mrs. Peddelem knew it.

Wesley crossed the room, going to sit at his desk. He pushed the papers and bills off its surface onto the floor, suddenly not minding the mess. From a drawer he drew out a clean piece of paper and a pen, then titled the paper 'Things To Do.' Underneath that, he wrote the number one.

Making lists was comforting, if a bit ridiculous. Cordelia used to mock him when he'd write up a grocery list with two items on it when it was his turn to stock the kitchen at the hotel. Yes, he knew they only needed eggs and coffee, but writing it down made him feel content, organized. In a world so chaotic, a little organization here and there never hurt anybody.

Tapping the end of the pen against his chin, Wesley thought over his options. Clearly, he could not stay in this apartment. Should he spend the day finding another one? While the chances of finding a place to live was high, finding a way to afford a new deposit and move his furniture in that short amount of time was not. No, he'd have to leave everything behind, or sell it.

Selling it would be the best option, as he needed the money, but how? Maybe if he had a week, he could take out a classified ad. Unfortunately, time was not on his side.

His eyes glanced over at his bookshelf, loaded to full capacity with texts both valuable and rare. They'd taken him awhile to collect, but they would only take a minute to get rid of. There were plenty of occult bookshops in the area that would be content to take them off his hands for a reasonable sum. Although, some of them he thought he'd rather not release into the general public, just in case they were used for dark purposes. The last thing he wanted was to be responsible for any other misfortune.

A plan was rapidly forming in his mind. He felt a strange sort of excitement building up in his chest, very similar to what he felt shortly after his release from the hospital in Sunnydale. Maybe it was a combination of hopelessness, the wearing off of his pain killers, and the utter sense of having absolutely nothing to lose no matter what he did, but for the first time in ages, he was actually looking forward to yet another radical shift in his life. At least it was never boring.

Lowering pen to paper, Wesley started to write quickly and confidently across the page.

# # # # # # 

"Welcome, Blessed Be," said the young woman, bowing deeply before Wesley as he entered the shop, arms loaded down with an exceptionally heavy box.

He tried not to roll his eyes at her theatrics. Really, did anybody buy into that sort of silliness? He didn't quite grunt when he pushed the box up onto the counter, only for the sake of his throat. Walking all the way down to this shop from his apartment carrying the damn thing hadn't been an easy task in his weakened state. At times like these, he really wondered whatever became of his SUV, not that he could afford to gas it up if he wanted.

Pulling a small notepad and a pen out of his pocket, he wrote the word, 'selling' upon it, then showed it to her. She nodded sagely, far too sagely for it to be believable, then started going through the books he'd brought. She tsk'd and clucked as she reviewed each one, Wesley assuming these were sounds of approval, but he couldn't be certain.

"Quite a collection," she said, sounding impressed. "Any particular reason why you're selling such wonderful references and spell books?"

Wesley stared at her for a moment, then pointed to his throat.

"Ah, so the power of speech has left you," she said knowingly. Wesley thought that was a rather stupid observation. Obviously, if he could talk, he wouldn't be writing things down, now then would he? She continued on anyway. "Thus, without your words, many of these spells exist beyond your grasp?"

Shaking his head, Wesley scratched out a short sentence to her on his notepad.

It read, 'Bad insurance = High deductible.'

"Oh," the woman said, deflating a little. "Well, I guess that's a good reason. I'll give you three-hundred for the lot."

Nodding, Wesley watched the woman as she opened the register and counted out the money. She wrote him up a receipt, which he pocketed along with the cash. Taking the books out of the box, he took that back, knowing he'd need it again.

Reaching into his other pocket, he pulled out his list and crossed off the first item on top, then left the store.

# # # # # #

The box, filled once again with books, wasn't getting any lighter as he shifted it uncomfortably from one hip to the next, tapping his foot as he stood impatiently at the queue. While there were clearly five counters where employees could stand and serve their customers, only one person was actually working. She moved very slowly, like her legs were trapped in molasses, the angry glare on her face encompassing all of them, as if they were wasting her time and how dare they expect her to actually do her job! The nerve of it all.

A screaming child ran too close past his legs, knocking Wesley off-balance. He glanced at the child's mother, who was busy chatting on a cell phone and not paying the least bit of attention to her offspring. A teenager behind him had stuffed earphones in his ears, the music from his iPod audible from even a great distance. All around him people grumped and groused, tempers growing ever shorter, vile mutterings slipping from their lips.

Wesley figured, if he were to die tomorrow, this would be the hell designed just for him. An eternity spent suffering in this place, in a line that never moved, a horrid dimension where the worst of human society came to the fore. Yes, it was appropriate - his hell would most certainly be the post office.

"Next!" snapped the woman behind the counter, staring at the customer that came up as if it were something foul she'd stepped in on the bottom of her shoe. Wesley couldn't hear what the young woman asked for, but the postal employee sighed loudly, her lip curling in disdain.

"Stamps!" she said, shaking her head in disgust. "Do you not see the machine over there that sells them? Why are you wasting my time asking for stamps?"

He knew he should watch, get a feel for the threat he would soon face, study his enemy in the form of a postal employee so he could devise a way to best handle her when his turn finally came up, but something told Wesley that no matter what he did, the results would be disastrous. Instead, he tuned the woman and her hapless customer out, glancing up at the ceiling and letting a rousing rendition of a medley of greatest hits from "The Clash" drift through his head. He was halfway through "London Calling" when a loud "NEXT!" broke through his revelry and he realized his turn had finally arrived.

Walking up to the counter, Wesley set the taped up box of books gingerly on the counter. He'd already addressed it, so all he needed for her to do was meter the cost of shipping for him. He pointed to the box, pointed to the scale, and hoped that would get his point across.

"What do you want?" the woman asked harshly, Wesley's point clearly sailing over her head entirely.

Holding back a sigh, Wesley pulled out his notepad and wrote very plainly that he wanted to mail that box to the address it was addressed to and needed to pay for the shipping costs. He showed it to her and she sneered, then set about doing as he asked grudgingly, all the while muttering under her breath.

"Unbelievable," she hissed, shaking her head as she threw his box on the scale. "Not a single one of you can do anything for yourselves. Always demanding, always asking, always krit-sheem dira mora palis skrit MAL!"

Wesley took a step back eyes going wide. He recognized that language. The woman, hissing and sputtering in front of him, was a Kreltick demon, a kind of shape-shifter with a habit of eating garbage. Peering intently over her shoulder, he squinted at the postal employees moving around in the back room. One of them, he realized with some alarm, had three legs.

Suddenly, the world made a lot more sense.

"Eighteen-fifty," the demon woman snapped.

Still in a little shock, Wesley shoved her a twenty and didn't think it was worth arguing when she shorted him on his change. Pocketing his coins, he stepped away from the counter, the demon woman screaming 'next' loud enough to make the people around him jump. With a shake of his head, Wesley hurried out of the post office and into the LA sunshine.

Safe on the sidewalk, he crossed the next item off his list and climbed on his motorcycle, driving in the direction of the library.

# # # # # #

The library was crowded, but nobody seemed to be reading any books. Rather, everyone perched around on various couches and tables, laptops propped up on flat surfaces, typing rapidly. The public terminals were all in use and Wesley rocked back and forth on his heels for a moment, not quite sure what to do.

The emergence of Wi-Fi and free Internet connections in libraries was a blessing and a curse, Wesley figured. While not a technophobe, he didn't think libraries should have turned into Internet cafes. For him, libraries always represented a welcome respite from the real world, cool, musty places where he could slip away into the stacks and spend hours at a time, reading to his leisure about worlds near and far, real and fiction. Hearing all this clacking was distracting and highly unwelcome. But, hypocrite that he was at the moment, Wesley needed one of those bloody public terminals.

Wesley ran his fingers through his hair, grimacing at how sticky it felt. Normally, when going to a public library, he'd endeavor to make himself look his most presentable, mostly out of respect. However, since he hadn't showered in ages, the nurses usually washing him down while he slept in bed, and he hadn't bothered to change into different clothes that morning, Wesley knew he looked positively grubby, maybe even borderline homeless. It couldn't be helped, though, and he tried to ignore the wrinkling of the librarian's nose when he walked up the counter.

"Can I help you?" she said, not in a friendly way.

A clipboard sat next to her just behind the counter and Wesley pointed at it. She followed his gesture, but didn't hand it to him. Instead, she reached into her desk and pulled out a single sheet of paper.

"Please review and sign the following release and list of rules pertaining to the use of public access terminals," she said, thrusting it at him along with a pen. "Do you have a library card?"

Wesley nodded, reaching into his back pocket and taking out his wallet. He handed her the appropriate card and she looked at it carefully, before scanning it into her computer. Wesley signed the form she handed him, passing it back to her, and she passed him the clipboard. He signed that, too.

"Thank you," she said, then pointed up to the monitors hanging from the ceiling. "When a computer becomes free, you'll see the first three letters of your last name and the first three letters of your first name next to the terminal number that's available. During times of high usage, patrons are requested to limit their time on the computer to 20 minutes. Go take a seat."

Nodding his thanks, Wesley didn't go take a seat right away as she requested, instead slipping into the stacks. He didn't need the card catalogue to find what he was looking for - come to think of it, they probably didn't even use card catalogues anymore. Walking into the foreign language section, he poked around several of the texts, looking for something he hadn't read before. Most of the books were popular new releases simply printed in Spanish, but he had, on occasion, found something worthwhile. Looking at the Italian language books, he suddenly felt the eerie sensation that someone was staring at him. Glancing up, he looked left, then right, then, on a whim, down.

Standing there, open mouthed and stock-still, was a little boy, no more than six years old, staring at the scar on his neck. Wesley raised his eyebrow at him and the boy jumped, taking a few steps back, but he didn't look away. The two of them remained locked in their staring contest for several moments, when a heavyset woman came bustling around the corner.

"Albert, what are you..." She stopped when she saw Wesley, then grabbed her son's hand. She waggled a finger at Wesley, glaring at him angrily. "What do you think you're doing, scaring my son? You keep away from him!" Leaning down to Albert, she spoke to him in a stage whisper, loud enough for Wesley to hear. "Don't you go talking to weirdoes like that. That's a bad man. We talked about this."

Tightening her grip on her son, she dragged him away, around the corner, but he kept his eyes trained on Wesley until he was gone from sight. Turning back to the books, Wesley stared at them for a moment, blinking rapidly. Sighing, he tried to reassure himself that, even if he'd been at his most healthy and his most presentable, the mother still might have said the same thing. He should be pleased to see that she was teaching her son to stay away from strangers who might kidnap him and get him lost in a unknown demon dimension.

Right.

Shuddering, Wesley reached out widely for a random book, accidentally knocking it and three others to the floor. With a mental groan, he sank down to his knees to gather them up. Reaching for the last one, he froze, his eyes fixed to its cover.

The last book lost its outer jacket when it hit the floor. The cheap paper cover said it was nothing more than an extremely dry book on the history of the Roman paints and pigments. However, underneath the paper, the book revealed something completely different. Wesley could scarcely believe it.

Tearing off the cover, Wesley confirmed his suspicions. On the top of the spine, looking like nothing more than a decorative embellishment, was complex, knotted symbol the likes of which had vanished from their reality some one hundred years ago. The Arovek Codex. He didn't know any of those still existed. To his knowledge, all were lost over the centuries under mysterious circumstances. Looking left and right to make sure no one was watching him, he slipped the cover back on and flipped open the first page. It looked like the book had only been checked out once, back in 1973, to a man named Isaac Demerov. Sure enough, as he paged through it, it was a very dry piece on Roman paints and pigments, but the words wavered slightly and the paper made his fingertips tingle.

Mesmerized, Wesley carried it to the front librarian, holding it out to her. It took her a few minutes, but she finally glanced up at him, sighing deeply and snatching the book from his hands. After scanning in his library card, she handed the book back to him, and it was his, for two weeks, at which point he would need to return it or incur steep fees and the wrath of the public library foundation. He felt a little guilty that he would never return it to this place, but the Arovek Codex! Lord.

"Your computer is ready," the librarian said with a bored tone of voice, waving lazily at the monitor above the desk.

Wesley, still lost in his thoughts about the book in his hand, didn't immediately register what she was talking about. When she gestured again, Wesley looked up. Sure enough, his turn had arrived. Nodding at her again, he hurried over to the computers, finding the one waiting for him, and moved the mouse to remove the screen saver.

It only took him a few seconds to pull up the web browser and load Craig's List. Pulling his list out of his pocket, he quickly set about putting up a quick and dirty classified advertisement, listing all of his furniture, knick-knacks, and any remaining items in his apartment for sale, all priced drastically lower than their actual worth. He hoped, doing it this way, he could get rid of everything quickly and at least recover some money for his efforts. Adding in a little thing at the end, asking people not to e-mail him, but rather simply arrive at his apartment that evening between the hours of six and nine that night, he quickly posted it. Without a second thought, he crossed that part of the list on the table.

The Arovek Codex sat on the table next to it and he rested his hand along the cover, feeling the magical energy in the book tickle the palm of his hand. Astounding, simply astounding, that he should find this now. Wesley wasn't a big fan of fate, but he couldn't deny it existed. Maybe, something somewhere was trying to tell him something. He knew his father, at least, would be jealous to know that he found it, not that the man would ever say as much.

Thinking back on his failed conversation with his father the day before, he opened up Google. How did people who couldn't speak talk on the phone? There had to be a way to do it. Not that he intended to call his father back, of course, but it might be useful to know, in case he needed to do, well, anything.

# # # # # # 

Looking left and right over his shoulder, Wesley sat uneasily at the pay phone, glancing down at the keyboard in apprehension. He felt stupid even thinking of using it. His condition warranted it, sure enough, but he worried people would stare. Granted, given the massive, red, angry scar on his throat, they were staring anyway, so he didn't have any clue as to what he was so worked up about.

Angry at his own foolish paranoia, Wesley lifted the receiver off the hook in defiance, setting it down on the cradle in front of the keyboard then carefully dialed the numbers 7-1-1. Within a few seconds, a greeting came across the screen. The acronyms and short hand made him blink, but he thought back on that page he'd looked at on the Internet at the library.

SPRINT CRS CA 7007F (UR CALLER ID WILL SEND) NBR PLS GA Q

Hesitantly, he tapped the spacebar, trying to think how to word a response. Knowing that somebody was sitting on the other end of the phone, would be listening to their conversation and voicing his words, the whole thing felt rather embarrassing. He tried to imagine setting up a doctor's appointment or calling his father while somebody sat in. The thought made his stomach twist uncomfortably. Swallowing, a reflex that wasn't in his best interest at the moment, he started to type back.

HELLO. PLEASE MAKE A CALL LONG DISTANCE FOR ME. (323) 555 - 1042. CALLING CARD 1 (800) 555-6347 PIN NUMBER 4539802 HCO THANK YOU GA

Picking up the phone, he heard the woman on the other end say something like "Shit," followed by the rapid turning of pages before he heard her say, "One moment please," and her microphone went dead. Wesley bit his lip, wondering if he'd done something wrong. Her line came back at last and she sounded less frustrated. 

"Thank you, now dialing," she said, almost robotically, but Wesley could detect a tone of Texas drawl in her accent.

At least the call center wasn't in India. Listening, he heard the recording for his calling card start up, then the nameless woman on the other end began entering touch-tones. Soon enough, the line was ringing again, and Wesley shifted in his chair, unreasonable worry setting up residence in his soul. What if he hung up? What if they reached his voice mail? What if the number had changed? So many things could go wrong.

On the fourth ring, however, a familiar voice answered the phone, sounding weary. "Hello?"

Wesley almost started to answer out of reflex, but a chipper voice beat him to it.

"A person is calling you through Sprint California Relay Service," said the woman in Texas. "This is Communications Assistant 7007. Have you received a hearing-thru call before?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Have you received a hearing-thru call before?" The woman's voice took on a noticeably less cheerful tone.

"No," replied the voice, sounding confused. "I don't believe I have."

"Okay," the woman said, and Wesley wondered how many of his calling card minutes he was going to lose while they got everything sorted out. "The person who is calling you can hear but does not speak. You will be able to speak directly to the caller and they will be able to hear your message. When you are finished speaking, please say the words 'Go Ahead' and that will inform the caller that it is their turn to respond. They will type their response, which will be read to you. One moment for your call to begin."

"Very well."

"Thank you."

There was a notable pause on the line and Wesley realized belatedly that he should be typing. Hastily lowering the phone back on the TTY machine, nearly dropping it in the process, he set it in its cradle and pressed the space bar a few times to get his bearings. Taking a deep breath, he started to type.

HELLO, MR. GILES. THIS IS WESLEY WYNDHAM-PRYCE. I M SORRY FOR DISTURBING YOU. DO YOU HAVE A MOMENT TO TALK Q GA

Wesley quickly picked the phone up, just in time to hear the woman finish reading his words out loud. There was a long pause on the other end, during which the woman asked Mr. Giles to "go ahead" once more. Rupert cleared his throat.

"Wesley, is that you? Why are you calling me like this? What's happened?"

He didn't sound particularly pleased, not that Wesley could blame him. They didn't exactly get along personally, although professionally they'd managed to meet something of an impasse. Regardless, they hadn't spoken in nearly a year.

"Is that a 'go ahead' sir?" asked the woman.

"Yes, yes, go ahead," Giles said, very irritated.

Wesley set the phone back down.

I VE RECENTLY SUFFERED AN INJURY TO MY THROAT WHICH MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO SPEAK FOR THE TIME BEING. I KNOW YOU RE NOT ONE TO CHECK YOUR EMAIL ON A REGULAR BASIS, BUT I DID NEED TO SPEAK WITH YOU, SO THIS SEEMED MY ONLY OPTION.

Pausing, watching the words fly by on the tiny screen, Wesley wondered if he'd just said too much. Apparently, his tendency to babble when nervous extended even into the typewritten word. He quickly tacked on a 'GA' and lifted the phone to his ear once more.

"A throat injury?" Giles asked, alarmed. "Is Angelus back?" There was another pause, then Giles cleared his throat once more. "Er, go ahead."

NO, NOT AT THE TIME BEING, I DON T THINK, ALTHOUGH ANGEL IS RATHER IRRITATED WITH ME AT THE MOMENT TO THE POINT WHERE HE MIGHT AS WELL BE BACK. I M FINDING IT NECESSARY TO GET OUT OF TOWN. GA 

"Wesley, get to the bloody point," Giles said with a sigh. "It's almost 2 o'clock in the morning here and I'm tired. Go ahead."

Not sure he heard that right, Wesley glanced down at his watch as he put the phone back down. Two o'clock in the morning? Why that was England time. Giles wasn't in California anymore?

WHERE ARE YOU NOW Q ARE YOU NO LONGER IN SUNNYDALE Q GA

"No, I'm not." There was the sound of shifting around and Wesley suspected Giles was getting out of bed. "I left back in November to return to England. I only keep this cell phone with the Sunnydale number so that Buffy and the others can call me without paying long distance should they need to. Go ahead."

I SEE.

Honestly, Wesley didn't see at all. He tapped the spacebar a few times while he thought. He couldn't imagine a reason why Giles would leave Sunnydale. Council or no Council, Giles was still Buffy's Watcher. With Joyce having passed away in the last year, not to mention Buffy own recent death and subsequent resurrection, Wesley suspected she could use Giles more than ever at the moment. Perhaps the man had his own reasons, but whatever they were, Wesley decided it was none of his business to question them.

WELL ANYWAY SO I M HAVING SOME PROBLEMS HERE IN LOS ANGELES GA

"Obviously," Giles said dryly. "Now, if you would care to inform me of what these problems are so I can see if it's necessary for me to contact Buffy and the others? Go ahead."

Wesley bit his lip. How could he describe this situation to Giles? What if the other man found fault in his own actions? He might hang up the phone in disgust or start yelling at him or all manner of other unpleasant things. A good British man didn't air his difficulties if it could be avoided. He was starting to wonder what inspired him to call Giles in the first place.

Maybe, just maybe, he needed someone to talk to about the whole thing, someone with enough distance from the situation to look at it objectively. Giles might understand. He might agree and say he'd have done much the same in Wesley's place. On the other hand, he may very well call him a fool and indeed start yelling. Either way, at least it would give him more of a mental picture of where he should stand, because, as much guilt as he felt at the loss of Angel's son, he couldn't fight off the nagging feeling that he'd been _right_ , lousy outcome aside.

IT S A RATHER LONG STORY AND SINCE I ONLY HAVE 1000 MINUTES OF CALL TIME ON THIS CARD, I LL TRY TO TYPE QUICKLY. I DON T KNOW IF YOU ARE AWARE OR NOT BUT ANGEL HAS A SON A CHILD HE FATHERED WITH DARLA. DON T ASK ME ABOUT THE SPECIFICS OF HOW THAT OCCURRED BECAUSE I STILL HAVEN T FOUND A GOOD EXPLANATION. MOVING ON I STARTED LOOKING INTO PROPHECIES OUT OF WORRY ABOUT WHAT ROLE SUCH A MIRACLE CHILD MIGHT PLAY. I DISCOVERED SEVERAL ALL OF WHICH STATED THE SAME THING - THE FATHER WILL KILL THE SON. I TRANSLATED IT EVERY WAY POSSIBLE HOPING IT WAS SOME KIND OF METAPHOR BUT IT ALWAYS CAME OUT THE SAME WAY. THE FATHER WILL KILL THE SON. WORRIED THAT WE MIGHT LOSE ANGEL TO ANGELUS AGAIN ESPECIALLY CONSIDERING THE VERY VAMPIRIC WAY HE WAS ACTING I MADE A DECISION TO TAKE THE CHILD AND HIDE AWAY IN ORDER TO PROTECT CONNOR. WHILE IN THE PROCESS OF DOING THIS HOWEVER A VERY UNPLEASANT WOMAN SLIT MY THROAT AND LEFT ME TO DIE IN SOME BUSHES KIDNAPPING ANGEL S SON WHO NOW IS LOST IN A HELL DIMENSION OF SOME SORT. LONG STORY SHORT ANGEL ATTEMPTED TO SMOTHER ME WITH A PILLOW WHILE I WAS IN THE HOSPITAL EVERYONE OVER AT THE OFFICE HAD TOLD ME TO NEVER COME BACK AND I M SORT OF AT A LOSS AT THE WHOLE SITUATION. GA 

Taking a deep breath, Wesley lifted up the phone only to hear silence at the other end. He knew Giles hadn't hung up because he could hear the man breathing. Aside from that, the operator would have informed him.

"Go ahead please, sir," said the woman, who sounded remarkably calm and uninterested about the whole conversation up to this point.

What a job she had, Wesley thought, listening in on people's private conversations all day long. He supposed this wasn't the strangest thing she'd ever encountered. The fact that he could hear her flipping pages of a magazine while they waited for Giles to respond was reassuring.

"Have you gone quite mad?" Giles said at last. "Go ahead."

POSSIBLY, BUT EVERYTHING I JUST TOLD YOU IS THE TRUTH. I WAS WONDERING IF I COULD GET YOUR OPINION. DID I DO THE RIGHT THING? GA 

Giles sighed loudly and Wesley could almost imagine him taking off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. "I don't know what to tell you, Wesley. From the situation as you described it, I'd say you did. Had I been in your shoes, I probably would have done much the same - get out of his way first, sort out the rest later from a distance when the child was safe. We've both read the Watcher Diaries. We know what Angel is capable of as Angelus from those, as well as... first hand. Go ahead." 

YES... THE THING THAT HAS SET OFF MY COWORKERS IS THAT I DID NOT TELL THEM WHAT I WAS PLANNING. I DIDN T FEEL AS IF I COULD. ONE OF THEM DUE TO RECENT CIRCUMSTANCES I DIDN T FEEL I COULD TRUST. THE OTHER IS CURRENTLY DATING THAT INDIVIDUAL SO THEREIN LIES YET ANOTHER CONFLICT. THE THIRD... I SUPPOSE I COULD HAVE TOLD LORNE BUT HE S SO UNPREDICTABLE. I THOUGHT IF I COULD JUST GET AWAY WITH CONNOR I COULD DO AS YOU SAID... SORT IT ALL OUT LATER ONCE WE WERE BOTH AT A SAFE DISTANCE. BUT THAT DIDN T HAPPEN AND THE PROPHECY PROVED TO BE FALSE. NOW CONNOR IS GONE AND EVERYTHING HAS FALLEN TO PIECES. I DON T KNOW WHAT TO DO. GA

"I don't think I can tell you what to do, Wesley."

There was water running in the background, the sound of a kettle being moved around. Wesley thoughts turned fondly to that hot cup of tea across an entire continent and an ocean, wishing he was there to enjoy it. Times like this he suspected he never should have left England. There was nothing wrong with a desk job.

"I can tell you this much," Giles continued. "What's done cannot be undone. You have a decision to make at this juncture. Do you remain in Los Angeles, try to reconcile with Angel and the others or perhaps continue on with the duty impressed upon us when we took that oath and became Watchers in another capacity? Or do you move on, start a new life somewhere else? That's a decision I can't make for you. Go ahead."

Wesley tapped the spacebar, finding it a delightful way to gather his thoughts and let the operator know he was still there. Giles spoke plainly enough - he did have a choice to make, none of which sounded overly appealing. Starting over with a new life wasn't easy, as he learned shortly after Sunnydale. Returning to England, while tempting, would be akin to admitting failure to his father. True, he had failed at this point, but he didn't feel he was quite ready to admit it to himself. The thought of staying in Los Angeles made his stomach ache. No, everything sounded horrible.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO Q GA

Giles gave a sort of mocking laugh. "You're not asking the right person, Wesley," he said sardonically. "I've been questioning every decision I've made for the past two years. You think you're doing something right, logically, even though your heart is telling you otherwise. But, if you listen to your heart, you end up in a whole different set of trouble. No, all you can do is make a decision and see how it pans out."

He almost lowered the phone, but Giles hadn't said to go ahead, yet. He heard the man sitting down and taking a sip of his tea, his fingers tapping on something, perhaps a table in his flat. Wesley waited patiently. The few and far between phone calls they'd traded since he left Sunnydale told him to expect this. Mr. Giles was a considering sort of fellow, who took his time before speaking to gather his thoughts. Wesley envied him for that ability.

"If it were me," Giles began slowly after the short pause, "I would probably leave. There's only so much you can do, Wesley. If they don't want your help, don't feel they need it any longer, leave them to their own devices. There are other ways to continue your duty. Have you considered returning to England? Go ahead."

YES BUT I DO NOT THINK THAT WOULD BE POSSIBLE AT THIS TIME.

Wesley didn't want to come right out and say that he was completely broke, with just enough money from the sale of his things to gas up his motorcycle. He certainly couldn't afford a plane ticket back to England. Even if he had the money for it, what would he do once he got there? The Council would never take him back, not that he had any real desire to work for them again. Any translating or demon-related positions tended to be snapped up by moonlighting Watchers. No, the only thing he could think of doing if he moved back to England was moving back in with his parents and nothing could make him do that.

BUT YOU ARE CORRECT. I DON T THINK I CAN STAY HERE. I HAVE A FEELING IT MIGHT BE HAZARDOUS TO MY HEALTH, MORE SO THAN USUAL, I MEAN. GA

Giles was laughing when Wesley picked up the phone again and it made him smile. The man didn't laugh very much, in Wesley's experience. Something about what they went through in Watcher training, Wesley thought, made them all a little cracked. One would probably have to be to agree to stand in a graveyard holding a notebook and watching a teenage girl kill monsters.

"Living is hazardous to one's health," Giles remarked. "How bad is your injury? Will you regain your ability to speak? Go ahead."

ONCE THE SWELLING GOES DOWN AND THE INJURY HAS HEALED SOME MORE, YES. FOR THE TIME BEING, I AM RESTRAINED TO MAKING VAGUE HAND GESTURES AND WRITING THINGS DOWN IN A LITTLE NOTEBOOK. IT S QUITE INCONVENIENT BUT PERHAPS IT WILL HELP CURE ME OF MY FOOT-IN-MOUTH DISEASE. GA

"One can only hope," Giles said, but there was no malice in his tone. "Well, Wesley, I can only wish you the best at this juncture, as well as a speedy recovery. Think hard about what you're going to do, but remember, as your current situation proves, sometimes even when you consider all the options and try to make the right choice, it ends up being wrong no matter what you do. I don't think your decision was wrong, but you can't help what transpired as a result. Think of this as an opportunity to get a fresh start, if you think that will help. I'd like for you to call me from time to time, let me know how things are going. However, I do request that you attempt to do it at a more reasonable hour? Go ahead."

NOW THAT I KNOW YOU RE ACROSS THE POND, I WILL ENDEAVOR TO DO SO.

It was oddly nice of Giles to be taking such an interest. He wondered if the man was simply bored. Then again, Watchers tended to go insane from time to time when things went badly, so maybe he was just worried about that. Wesley didn't feel like he was going insane. Rather, he felt oddly calm, like he was in a boat traveling down a swift river toward a very high waterfall, but long ago realized that no amount of paddling would reverse his course. Sometimes, he thought, you just had to let life take you where it wanted and not fight it.

It was possible the painkillers currently digesting in his belly played a part in that particular attitude, but Wesley wasn't going to argue.

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF MR. GILES AND I HOPE EVERYTHING WORKS OUT FOR YOU IN ENGLAND. SAY HELLO TO SOME OF THE OLD CROWD FOR ME AND I LL LET YOU GET BACK TO SLEEP. THANK YOU AGAIN FOR TAKING MY CALL. GA 

"Not at all, Wesley," Giles said pleasantly. "To be honest, it was sort of refreshing to hear from a fellow former Watcher. I'd forgotten how irritating the rest of them are." He muttered something rude under his breath, but not so Wesley could completely understand him. "Take care, Wesley, and I'll be hearing from you soon, so to speak. Go ahead."

YES, SO TO SPEAK. THANKS AGAIN. I APPRECIATE YOUR INSIGHT. GA OR SK

"Goodbye, and thank you operator," Giles replied and Wesley heard him hang up the phone.

"The person hung up," remarked the woman in Texas and Wesley started, nearly having forgotten she was there at all. "Go ahead please."

THANK YOU I APPRECIATE YOUR HELP GOODBYE SKSK

"You're welcome," she said pleasantly. "Goodbye and ready to hang up."

Wesley typed a final "SKSK" then hung up the phone. He looked down at his calling card, wondering how many minutes he had left on it, then shrugged and slipped it into his wallet. He could check that later. Right now, he had quite a bit of thinking to do.

# # # # # #

The apartment was empty. Completely and totally empty. Wesley stared around, shell-shocked, half expecting a lonely cricket to start chirping.

He didn't anticipate quite so many people would show up at his apartment. But came they did, with trucks and friends, cash in hand, happy to relieve him of all his things. Even the refrigerator full of rotting food had been picked clean, all of its contents taken by a young, scruffy man who declared himself an artist and gave Wesley five bucks for all of it.

The only thing left behind was his rucksack, stuffed with clothes, a couple of books he didn't sell or mail to Angel Investigations, as well as the Arovek Codex, and his toothbrush. His motorcycle helmet sat next to that, thankfully, though one young woman did buy the pink one. Someone also tried to buy his painkillers, but Wesley put a stop to that, knowing he would need them.

For all his personal possessions, he'd raked in a tidy sum of money, more than enough to get him through a month or so while he figured out what to do with his life. That was really the crux of it, wasn't it? The rest of his life.

Wesley sighed, sitting down cross-legged on the scratchy, cheap carpet, popping open the top of his Campbell's Soup at Hand Cream of Mushroom. He sipped it cold, lacking a microwave now, which flew out of the apartment for fifteen dollars. He figured it was just as well, since hot soup would probably aggravate his injury to an exceptional degree.

The more he thought about it, the more he thought Giles was right. He couldn't stay in Los Angeles, but he already knew that. No, this was his chance for a fresh start, a chance to redefine himself. That would put him on Wesley Wyndham-Pryce version three. Or was it four? He'd lost track.

Leaving Sunnydale had been easier. He didn't live there for a terribly long time before he decided to leave and nobody there especially liked him in the first place. Thinking back on those days, he remembered how he felt back then, as he walked out of the Sunnydale Hospital. He wasn't alone then - Giles had stopped by from time to time, checking on him, berating him, or simply sitting with him.

For a long while after that, he wondered why Giles bothered. During the many months on the road, with only his motorcycle and his wits to keep him alive and moving, he came to the decision that perhaps it was Giles's way of thanking him for at least making the attempt to right his previous wrongs, to come back and fight the good fight, even if he didn't do a bang up job of it. He enjoyed the illusion that maybe, just maybe, Giles respected him a little for his efforts, finally thinking of him as a colleague, rather than an annoying gnat.

He never went back to Sunnydale because the last thing he wanted was that illusion shattered to pieces. It was a nice delusion, letting him sleep at night, and he reveled in it shamelessly. It felt good, imagining that someone thought well of him, after the Council fired him, his father wasn't speaking to him, and he'd offended more people in his short time in Sunnydale that ever before in his life.

He still didn't know what inspired him to call Giles that afternoon. Nostalgia, perhaps? A way of connecting with the only person who ever talked to him like a person, not counting the others at Angel Investigations, of course, though it took getting knocked unconscious by a vampire to do it? Whatever the reason, Wesley was glad he did it. Nobody else was there to hear him out, in a matter of speaking.

One of the hazards of losing one's ability to speak, Wesley realized with some consternation, was the habit of self-reflection. Putting duty first, as a Watcher, then as a Rogue Demon Hunter, and finally as an employee and boss of Angel Investigations, kept him busy, kept his mind active and away from difficult personal analysis. This time around, however, there was nothing to keep him from his thoughts, nothing to prevent him from slipping down into a dark world of self-ridicule and depression, nothing to stop him from becoming... melodramatic and silly.

Grimacing at himself and the directions his thoughts were taking, Wesley stood, up tossing the empty soup container in the plastic grocery bag that currently served as his wastebasket. Looking around the apartment, he sought something worth doing. He could wipe down the counters, he supposed, perhaps fill in the few holes in the wall with toothpaste, but considering the way his landlord treated him that morning, he didn't feel much like doing it. He already knew he wouldn't be getting his deposit back, so what was the point? Let her report him to his credit agency if she liked - his score was dismal and he certainly had no intention of buying anything that would require credit approval in the near future. The apartment was dark, lit only with a few carefully placed candles, so he couldn't see if things were clean or not anyway.

Picking his way carefully to his bedroom, Wesley went over to his rucksack, pushing aside a few neatly folded pairs of undergarments. He dug around until his hands brushed the cover Arovek Codex, immediately recognizable by the tiny shocks it sent into his fingers. A very powerful book, one of the most powerful on record, actually, Wesley was glad he found it in the library when he did. Granted, it would be meaningless to those that didn't understand its power, but for it to fall into the wrong hands? Disastrous.

He carried the book back with him to the living room, sitting down cross-legged on the floor once more, setting the book in his lap. The single candle lit next to him flared a bit when he opened the cover. Even though the power of the book was painfully apparent even to the elemental forces in the room, he knew its secrets were as good as lost to him at the moment. The book required a complex and spoken spell for its true identity to be revealed. That made yet another thing he couldn't do because of his own misjudgment in trying to rescue Connor.

Setting the book aside, Wesley crawled over to his bedroll, already laid out on the floor. He smiled at it fondly as he laid down. His Rogue Demon Hunter years comprised the best years of his life, hands down. This particular bedroll had traveled with him across the country and back again, had kept him warm on chilly, Rocky Mountain nights, protected him from curious stains in cheap motels in Las Vegas, and even proved useful as a device to wrap around the eyes of a Tramidian Slug Beast while crossing the dusty Arizona desert. While he sincerely doubted the past couple years that he'd ever need it again, he'd kept it anyway, just in case. At least he did one thing right.

He fell asleep, not hearing the sounds of heavy footsteps in the hallway.

# # # # # #

The sun still slept below the horizon when Wesley walked down to the apartment office, slipping his keys into the slot in the door. A few cars and trucks roared down the street nearby, the world getting an early start, or perhaps a late end. As he closed the cheap, gold-plated flap, his keys falling with a 'tunk' down onto the office floor, it felt much the same to Wesley - a new start and the end of the old. With his keys gone, he finally severed all official ties to Los Angeles, now homeless, friendless, jobless, and yet full of hope.

Just like old times.

Pushing his hair back, he frowned as he noted it was getting a bit too long. A haircut might not be out of order. That could wait, he reasoned, until after he'd left LA far behind.

He hadn't a clue where to go now. Walking over to his motorcycle, Wesley double-checked his rucksack, making sure it was secured to the back. When he left Sunnydale the last time, he'd taken to drinking for awhile, hustling unsuspecting small-town yokels out of their hard-earned cash by playing darts. The idea to become a Rogue Demon Hunter only occurred to him when one of those small town yokels tried to eat his brains after a particularly successful game, in his opinion. The brain-eating gentlemen did not agree, however, so a quick battle ensued that ended with his favorite jacket all bloody. Fortunately, the town had a secondhand store, wherein he bought the leather jacket that carried him the rest of way on his journeys, which adorned his back now.

Life, it seemed to him as he climbed up on the back of his motorcycle, tended to go in circles. Oh, it might appear that the world continued valiantly on, ever changing, ever pushing forward, but that was nothing more than a dangerous illusion. History repeated itself, on the long term and the small scale, in Wesley's opinion. It shouldn't have surprised him he'd be back in the same place he started two years ago.

Just as he started to kick the motorcycle to life, a homeless man stumbled up to him, smelling strongly of booze and smoke, his grubby, mismatched clothes hanging from his thin frame. His unkempt beard, scruffy and decorated with bits of food, hung sadly on his chin. Deep, almost black eyes looked at Wesley from under overgrown eyebrows.

"Hey, man, spare a dollar?" he said, getting a great deal to close to Wesley's personal space and his nose. "Like, my wife is sick and my kid's got cancer and my dog needs his shots and you know how it is, man, huh? So, a dollar? Please?"

Without hesitation, Wesley fished around in his pocket and pulled forth a couple of bills, pushing them into the homeless man's hand. That could be him someday, he realized, very easily. Besides, it never hurt to get a little good karma on his side.

"Thanks, man, you're a prince," the homeless man said, grinning a grin full of sharp, broken, yellowed-teeth. "A real man of the ages."

With a simple nod, Wesley revved his motorcycle, the homeless man stepping away as he started to push off. The motorcycle hummed under him in a familiar, comforting way. At least this time, starting out, he this to begin with, unlike when he left Sunnydale and was forced to hitch rides for a month. Slipping on his helmet, he smiled to himself. Yes, this felt right.

As he roared off down the street, he didn't see the homeless man stick out his tongue, because if he did, he might have noticed its odd purple hue and metallic clack it made as the man ran it across the dollar bill.

End Chapter One


	2. Chapter Two

Doomed to Repeat  
 _by: DangerMouse_  


DO YOU BELIEVE IN FATE Q GA

Wesley raised the phone to his ear, stretching his back to get an uncomfortable crick out of it. The TTY machine attached to the payphone outside of the hotel where he was crashing for the night did not have a chair in front of it. Leaning down to type all the time was starting to make its awkwardness known in the various joints and muscles in his body.

Giles was laughing when the operator finished reading his sentence. He seemed in much better humor this time, maybe perhaps Wesley made sure to check his watch before calling. While close to 11 o'clock in the evening in California, it was mid-afternoon in England, certainly a much better time to be awake.

"Have you been drinking?" Giles asked, chuckling. The rattle of dishes could be heard in the background. "Go ahead."

NOT YET. GA

"I'd like to say no, but I suppose I do," Giles replied. "It comforting as well as frustrating. If fate does exist and this is what the universe preplanned for us all, I'd say we pissed somebody off royally along the way. I keep wondering if I neglected to make a proper sacrifice sometime during my Watcher's training. Lord knows I wasn't paying much attention at the time. Why do you ask? Go ahead."

Wesley smiled as he returned the phone to its cradle. Before leaning down, he tapped the spacebar a few times. A biting insect started to investigate his cheek and he slapped at it distractedly.

IT WOULD BE A NICE EXCUSE, DON T YOU THINK? TO PRETEND THAT NONE OF THIS IS OUR FAULT BUT THE WHIMS AND DESIRES OF AN UNKNOWN AND MALEVOLENT HIGHER BEING WITH TOO MUCH TIME ON ITS HANDS? GA

Giles didn't answer right away, clearly sipping something, most likely tea. When he set down his cup, he cleared his throat. "I'm going to go out on a limb here and make a guess that things are not going well for you at the moment? Go ahead."

OH, AS WELL AS CAN BE EXPECTED, I SUPPOSE.

That was true enough, Wesley thought as he stretched his back once more. Getting out of LA ended up taking the longest of his entire journey so far, traffic snarling even at the early hour he chose to leave. He ended up stopping for lunch halfway out of the city at a fast food restaurant, buying a too-sweet milkshake that came out of a machine and a cup of coffee he cooled with ice. It wasn't much, as far as food was concerned, so just before he reached Los Angeles city limits, he broke down and went into a grocery store, buying some more soup and baby food. The baby food was a painful purchase. It brought too many memories too close to the surface, which explained his current melancholy.

I M STOPPED FOR THE EVENING AT A HOTEL A FEW HOURS OUTSIDE OF THE CITY IN THE DESERT. IT S SMELLS STRANGE AND MY NEIGHBORS ARE QUITE NOISY BUT ALL THINGS CONSIDERED IT COULD BE WORSE. GA

"It's never quite as glamorous as they make it out to be on the telly, is it?" Giles asked and he sounded like he was speaking from experience. Wesley didn't know much about his wild past, but he knew enough to be certain he slept in his fair share of questionable establishments. "Have you decided where you're going next? Go ahead."

NOT SO MUCH. I THINK I MAY HEAD NORTH AND VISIT NORTHERN WASHINGTON. THE RAIN FOREST UP THERE IS SUPPOSED TO BE LOVELY THIS TIME OF YEAR AND AS IT S THE OFF SEASON CAMPING SITES ARE PROBABLY GOING AT A GOOD PRICE. I LL WORRY ABOUT WHAT TO DO AFTER THAT WHEN THE TIME COMES. GA

"How is everything else? Do you have enough wooden stakes? Holy water? Money? Go ahead."

Wesley blinked, hesitating before setting the phone down. Did Mr. Giles just ask him if he had enough money? Good Lord, he hoped the man didn't think he only called him to hit him up. How humiliating.

I HAVE MORE THAN ENOUGH AT THE TIME BEING DUE TO THE SALE OF MY PERSONAL EFFECTS PRIOR TO LEAVING LOS ANGELES. IT SHOULD GET ME THROUGH LONG ENOUGH FOR ME TO FIGURE OUT WHERE TO SETTLE DOWN. I DID SURVIVE SIX MONTHS ON THE ROAD WITH LESS THAN I HAVE NOW MR. GILES. I M CERTAIN I WILL SURVIVE THIS TIME AS WELL. GA 

"Relax, Wesley," Giles said with a good-humored sigh. "I'm not offering, merely asking. I know you can take care of yourself. However, this time around, you are injured and I wouldn't want you compromising your health, particularly while on the road. Go ahead."

Oh, well then. Wesley grimaced. Apparently, the loss of his voice really didn't cure his foot-in-mouth disease.

He couldn't help but feel a little touched, though, at the concern in Mr. Giles' voice. It surprised him as much as it pleased him, as he never would have excepted him or anyone else to give a damn. No one ever did before.

I UNDERSTAND MR. GILES AND THANK YOU. GA

"Not at all, Wesley." A buzzing sound echoed over the connection and he heard Giles get up. The sound of clanging came a few seconds later and it only took Wesley a few seconds to realize the man was in the middle of doing his laundry. "So, what are you considering, as far as career prospects? Do you intend to resume the good fight? Go ahead."

WELL I...

A hand suddenly grabbed his shoulder and Wesley spun around. A homeless man stood in front of him, shaking like he was coming off a high. Wesley stared at him dumb-founded for a moment.

It couldn't be. Why, it looked like the same homeless man from that morning! But that wasn't possible - Wesley was miles and miles away from Los Angeles. Perhaps, under the dirt and grime, the resemblance was just uncanny.

"Man, got some change, man?" the homeless man asked, holding out his hand and sniffling.

This time, Wesley didn't have change. He'd left his wallet and his rucksack back in his hotel, bringing out only his room key and the calling card. He spread his hands wide in the universal symbol of helplessness and shook his head.

"That's cool, that's cool," the homeless man replied then, without warning, he jumped forward.

Wesley braced himself for attack, falling into a familiar stance that usually proved useful when fighting vampires several times his own strength. By rotating his center of balance, it gave him more leverage for the oncoming assault. He knew, if necessary, he could throw the man to the ground and run like hell for his motel room.

As it turned out, he didn't need to, however. The man wasn't attacking him. He just grabbed Wesley's shoulders and ... licked his cheek.

If Wesley had the ability to make a sound of disgust, he would have. As it stood however, he was forced simply to shove the man away, wiping furiously at the wet spot on his face, utterly horrified. The homeless man didn't seem fazed, merely frowned for a second, then shook his head.

"Yeah, that's cool," he muttered, then turned and walked away into the shadows of the parking lot.

Stunned, at a loss as to what to think about that particular situation, Wesley turned back to the TTY phone, scratching his head. His first two words still sat there. With shaking fingers, he started typing on the keyboard once again.

ARE YOU STILL THERE Q GA 

"Yes, I am," Giles said as Wesley lifted the phone to his ear, and he sounded incredibly worried. "What happened? Go ahead."

I M NOT ENTIRELY SURE. A HOMELESS MAN JUST LICKED ME. GA

Giles didn't say anything for several moments when Wesley picked up the phone. "Sorry, did you just say a homeless man licked you? Go ahead."

YES GA

"And you haven't been drinking, correct? Go ahead."

Wesley rolled his eyes, dropping the phone back down on the cradle.

NO I HAVEN T BEEN DRINKING BUT I M ABOUT READY TO START. I THINK I NEED TO GO TAKE A SHOWER NOW. GA

"Of course," Giles said, and was he laughing at him? The hell, yes he was! Wesley scowled. "Enjoy your shower and I'll speak with you again at a later junction. Take care not to get licked anymore. Good night. Go ahead."

He could type something very juvenile at this point, Wesley realized, but decided against it. No, he was going to be the mature one here, go out with class for a change. Drawing up all his dignity and steadfastly ignoring the saliva drying on his cheek, Wesley rested his fingers back on the keyboard.

I WILL AT THAT. ENJOY THE REST OF YOUR DAY MR. GILES AND I WILL ENDEAVOR TO CALL YOU AT A LATER TIME. GOODBYE GA TO SK

"Goodbye, goodbye," Mr. Giles said, or at least, that's what Wesley thought he said. It was hard to tell over all that ridiculous chuckling. "Thank you operator. I'm hanging up now."

"The person hung up," came the voice of the operator, and damn it all to hell, she was laughing at him, too. "Go ahead, please."

NO MORE CALLS. THANK YOU RELAY. SKSK

"You're welcome. SKSK."

SKSK

With that, Wesley dropped the phone back on its hook, rolling his shoulders and shaking his head. Perhaps he could have worded it better, he thought as he walked back in the direction of his motel room. Next time a homeless man decided to lick him out of the blue, he'd describe it as an assault. Yes, that was much better.

Walking up the stairs, the sound of loud music reached his ears even before he stepped on the landing and Wesley rolled his eyes. Sure enough, the grating tones of heavy metal were coming from his next door neighbors, a young couple who were no doubt using the noise to cover up other activities. He banged on the door with his fist, then gasped. A sharp splinter in the wood cut his knuckle painfully and he shoved it in his mouth in the world's most unsanitary way to stop the bleeding. Using his other hand, he banged on the door again, a little more carefully, wondering if he should clean up the streak of blood on the wood or not.

"What?"

The door swung open and the young man stood in the entrance, stark naked as the day he was born. Wesley made a point of keeping his eyes raised. With his non-bleeding hand, he pointed to his ear, then pressed a finger against his lips.

"Whatever," the young man groused, going back into the room and slamming the door. He did turn the music down, though.

Nodding to himself, Wesley went into his own room, locking the door firmly and going over to his rucksack. Like any true Rogue Demon Hunter, or whatever he was at the moment, he had a first aid kit. Taking it over to the sink, he used a pair of tweezers to take out the splinter, then cleaned the wound. Rogue Demon Hunters and Watchers, for that matter, tended to get a lot of practice with splinters, thanks to all those bloody stakes.

Maybe he never should have left England, Wesley thought as he walked into the bathroom, shucking off his clothes. That's where all the trouble started. Oh, he was more than qualified to be the Slayer's Watcher, at least as far as the Council was concerned. He passed all his exams with flying colors, killed several vampires very efficiently under controlled circumstances, and his personality profile showed a relatively low propensity for psychosis. By all rights, he should have done just fine with Buffy, for as long as he lived. Most Watchers didn't outlive their Slayers, of course, seeing as how they happily walked into the same dangers without any of the super strength or agility. Giles had been the exception, rather than the rule.

A silverfish was skittering around the bottom of the tub and he reached down and caught it with a piece of toilet paper, flushing it down the drain. Turning on the hot water, he sat down on the toilet, waiting for it to heat up. He knew from when he tried to wash the grime of the road off his face earlier he'd have a long wait.

No, he was given the choice of coming to Sunnydale, as were all potential Watchers. It was a dangerous job and if an individual didn't think they could cut it, they were encouraged to decline. Wesley bore no hesitation when asked, however. It wasn't out of a need to be important, as some people no doubt thought, nor an overestimation of his own skills. A need to prove himself played a role in it, of course, but the main reason he said yes in an instant and ran out to pack his bags was because he wanted to get as far away from his father as possible. The potential of dying an early, painful death paled in comparison to finally getting some space to breathe. He didn't even care about proving himself - he'd more or less given up trying to impress his father years ago, though every now and then his masochistic side insisted he give it a shot.

Upon reflection, Wesley realized as he stuck his hand under the faucet to check the water temperature, that was probably the reason he failed with Buffy and Faith. He went to Sunnydale more out of his own self-interest than the Slayer's or the World's. Watcher's were meant to sacrifice everything for the cause - family, home, companionship, even their lives, to protect and train their Slayers, to chronicle their activities as a boon for future generations. Personal motivations played no role in that part, but during his time at Sunnydale, he couldn't let it go.

Twisting the knob, he let the semi-warm water flow out of the faucet head, stepping inside and pulling the grimy, off-white shower curtain closed around him. He'd run away from England because things went bad, ran away from Sunnydale for the same reason, and true to his earlier conjecture, he was doing it again, with Los Angeles this time. It was a pretty cowardly way to live, Wesley thought with a grimace and he reached for the tiny bottle of complimentary shampoo the motel gave him, which smelled vaguely of glycerin. It seemed no matter how many versions of Wesley Wyndham-Pryce he went through, he couldn't escape his true self. The history of the world went in circles, just as he suspected.

This was the last time, he decided, as he worked the shampoo into his hair, taking care not let any suds touch the still-healing wound on his neck. No more running. As soon as he found a place to settle down, he'd stay there, come hell or high water. Hell was probably more likely, as he tended to find that element whether he was looking for it or not. The rest of the world could rationalize away the strange forces in the world, but once a person looked upon the works of God and Demons, they could never see the world in any other way again.

Rinsing the rest of the soap away, Wesley turned off the water, kicking his feet a few times to get the droplets off his legs before pulling the curtain away. He grabbed the towel supplied by the motel, a too-small, thin, scratchy thing not worth stealing. Wiping himself down, he gathered up his clothes, exiting the bathroom and scrubbing his hair.

He was getting too old for this kind of instability. Sitting down on the bed, he grabbed his rucksack, pulling out a clean set of clothes and getting dressed. He always slept in his clothes, just in case something came up and he needed to bolt for the door or fight a demon at the last minute. One had to have dignity in the face of imperious odds. He never wanted to die in his pajamas.

Instability was a way of life for Watchers, but Wesley wasn't a Watcher anymore. The amount of money in his bank account reminded him of that every time he called to check it. Giles had asked him what he planned to do, asked him if he intended to fight the good fight, and, had the homeless man not chosen that moment to lick him, he would have told Giles yes. What else was an ex-Watcher, ex-Rogue Demon Hunter, ex-member of Angel Investigations supposed to do with his life? He possessed the knowledge and the skills to fight for the light, to make the world a safer, better place for the faceless, ignorant masses around them. As much as he wanted to, he couldn't turn his back on it.

So, he figured, he was just going to get used to instability. Lord knew he'd lived in its grip long enough. He should be used to it by now.

A steady, rhythmic banging was coming from the wall behind his bed and Wesley sighed, grabbing the comforter gingerly between his fingers and throwing it to the floor. He saw an investigative report once that showed, using special lights, that most motels never bothered to clean the comforters. Given what his neighbors were up to at the moment, what probably the rest of the motel was up to at the moment, he didn't want to sleep on that.

Crawling into the bed and pulling the sheet up around his shoulders, he tried to ignore the exclamations of joy coming from the woman next door.

# # # # # #

At four o'clock in the morning, Wesley was jolted from his peaceful, dreamless sleep by a loud rip from Disturbed blaring through his wall. Groaning, he pulled the pillow over his face, trying to block it out, but the only thing that accomplished was to make it hard to breathe. Throwing the pillow aside, he sat up, balling up his fist and banging firmly on the wall. When that didn't help, Wesley got up out of the bed, rubbing the back of his neck tiredly.

Taking care to take his keys with him so he wouldn't be locked out, Wesley shoved his feet into his shoes without tying them and walked out of his room. The music didn't sound quite as loud out here, he realized, so if push came to shove, he'd just sleep outside his door. Raising up his fist, he knocked on the door.

It swung open.

The sight that reached his eyes might have made even a seasoned law enforcement professional lose his lunch immediately, but Wesley had seen enough blood, gore, and ichor in his life not to be overly bothered in that way. He was alarmed, yes, but not horribly disgusted. The young man from earlier lay on the floor, eyes opened wide in surprise, as if he didn't expect to have his neck broken and his chest cavity sliced open. The woman, stretched out on the bed, looked similarly shocked. There was blood everywhere, dripping down the walls, the air smelling faintly metallic. They hadn't been dead long.

Wesley carefully walked into the room, slipping off his shoes first and taking care not to touch anything. One of the first things they learned in their Watcher's training that, given the nature of the situations they usually encountered, leaving trace evidence of your presence at a crime scene didn't bode well. An entire department of the Watchers Council was totally devoted to allocating funds for bail and finding places to hide Watchers accused of ghastly murders they didn't commit.

Leaning down, Wesley examined the body of the young man, looking over it critically with a trained eye. No, there was no need for him to be the one to call the police, not this time. Unless Freddy was passing through this part of town, Wesley knew human murderers didn't possess claws designed to rend flesh from bone, nor did they bleed purple blood.

Stepping back out of the room, Wesley scanned the parking lot, but he didn't see anything unusual. Whatever demon did this, it was long gone, or at least hiding very well. A reflection of light caught his eye and he turned back around and Wesley paused, narrowing his eyes.

The streak of blood on the door, courtesy of his earlier mishap, was wet. No, that wasn't correct. The blood itself was dried, but the wood over it was damp with a clear fluid. He didn't touch it, instead turning and hurrying to his room. He gathered up his things in record time, jogging out into the parking lot, dropping his hotel key in the slot as he went. He'd registered under a fake name out of habit, so hopefully they wouldn't be able to trace him very well. He didn't have the benefit of the Watcher's Council to get him out of unintended trouble now.

# # # # # #

"Top you off, honey?"

Wesley smiled benignly at the waitress, nodding his head. She filled his coffee mug and he inclined his head in thanks, transferring some ice over from his water to cool it down. The roadside diner he'd found on his way north was so stereotypical, he could hardly believe it actually existed. The waitresses wore matching, yellow uniforms with white aprons and silly hats, the large armed man in the back named Bubba the only cook. They shouted out orders in that funny diner slang - "Flop two cackle fruit and wax, burn the British with cow paste, blowout patches and machine oil, nervous pudding put a hat on it." Wesley had no idea what they were talking about, but the food was good.

"That's a funny picture book," his waitress said, leaning down to look at what Wesley was reading.

While Brown's "Complete Demon Index of Northwest America, 18th Edition" might be called many things, this was the first time Wesley heard of it referred to as a 'funny picture book'. Taking up his pen, he turned a page and wrote on his notepad, 'Research. Comic book artist.' The waitress sniffed and nodded sagely.

"Oh, so you draw them funny books like my son likes," she said, nodding. She pointed to a picture of a Torpek demon. "Thems sure is ugly. Guess that's what the boys like these days, hm?"

Wesley nodded encouragingly at her.

"Well, feel free to park in the gallery long as you want, honey," she said, batting her false eyelashes at him. "Ain't too busy right now. Let me know if you're needing something."

Wesley smiled, letting out a sigh of relief when she finally walked away. He turned back to his previous page in his notebook, where he'd been taking notes of various demons that might fit the profile of the one that murdered the young couple back at his hotel. He found plenty that bled purple, many with claws, but very few possessed both traits. Closing his eyes, he tried to visualize the crime scene, wondering if there was anything he missed.

Clearly, the demon was of above average intelligence, taking care to turn up the volume of the stereo to mask its murderous rampage. He didn't notice that either of the victims had been nibbled on in any way, so it wasn't food related. A thrill killing, perhaps? But if that was the case, why just those two? It would help if he knew something about them, but he couldn't exactly nip back to the motel and ask the front desk if he could know their names. The morning edition of the local paper already went to press, so he wasn't going to find any information that way. He hadn't seen it on the news, either. Still, he wasn't getting the impression the victims were actually connected to the occult in anyway.

Bad luck, plain and simple, it seemed. Wrong place at the wrong time. The question remained why it was the wrong place and the wrong time. It felt too contrived to be coincidence. Besides, Wesley didn't believe in coincidence.

He closed Brown's Index and took off his glasses, rubbing his eyes. For all he knew, the demon wasn't even local. He found himself keenly missing Cordelia's visions. At least then he'd have more to go on. Maybe, in his years with Angel Investigations, he'd grown complacent in his studies, so used to the Powers That Be simply telling them what to do and how to take care of it. The same thing went with the Slayer - nine times out of ten, no research was required. Cutting the head off tended to work well across the board, in most cases.

A second opinion might be helpful, he thought, but sadly, the payphone at the diner was not ADA compliant. Without a TTY attached, he was essentially cut off from the world outside. No, this was something he was going to have to figure out on his own, he was afraid. He felt badly for the world at large and its need to rely on him at the moment.

He was missing something.

The waitress bustled back over to him for the umpteenth time, not a surprise, since he was one of three customers. "You need anything, honey?" she asked, checking his coffee, which he hadn't touched since she filled it up last.

Wesley shook his head, scratching his cheek distractedly, still lost in his thoughts, trying to review every piece of data he possessed. There had to be something there, something he wasn't seeing. That's why second opinions were helpful, why collaboration was so important. He kept getting hung up on the way the bodies were found and as a result, he knew he was overlooking something important.

"You want something for that road rash?" she asked, pointing to his cheek. "I think we got some ointment or something in the first aid kit in the back."

Road rash? Wesley frowned, picking up his spoon and holding it up. His reflection bent around the surface, but he could see what the waitress was talking about sure enough. The skin on his cheek was reddened, but not alarmingly so, looking like windburn. If his helmet didn't cover his entire face, he might think it was actually that. So, what...

Wesley jumped up. The homeless man who licked him, the wetness on the door over his blood - of course! It was the same man as before, back in Los Angeles, but not a man at all. The demon must have tracked him somehow. Purple blood, claws, and a need to use taste as a way to follow prey... that meant bad vision, possibly even blindness. When he cut his hand on the door, he must have smelled his blood, licked it to make sure, then killed both the people inside, assuming it was him and a companion. It probably didn't take the demon long to figure out he'd killed the wrong person and Wesley suspected the woman died first. It was all so simple, all so obvious, once another person pointed out the final piece of the puzzle for him.

Grinning at the waitress, he scooped her up in his arms and placed a big kiss on her cheek, reaching into his wallet and pressing her a two hundred percent tip in thanks. Grabbing his things, he ran out of the diner, leaving her in stunned silence. Wesley hopped his motorcycle, gunning it to life and tearing off down the road.

He had to find an ADA compliant payphone.

# # # # # #

"Purple blood, claws, blind, tracks by smell and taste you say? Interesting."

Wesley tapped his fingers restlessly on the side of the payphone, kicking his foot while he waited for Giles to finish thinking. He was standing outside a crowded truck stop, the smell of exhaust, fried chicken, and the soft eggs he had that morning combining to make him slightly nauseous. Add into that the worry that the demon from motel could be lurking close by right now, ready to eviscerate him, and Wesley wasn't in the best of moods to begin with.

"I can think of a few species that might fit that profile, but most of them are Asian in origin, nothing you'd be overly likely to find in California," Giles continued on. While it was hard to hear with all the noise in the background, Wesley thought he detected many voices in the background over in England. Clearly, Giles wasn't at home. He glanced at his watch, frowning - it was the middle of the night there. Where was he? "What motivation do you think it has for wanting to kill you? Go ahead."

I DON T KNOW AND I DON T THINK IT NECESSARILY MATTERS. I WANT TO KILL IT BEFORE IT KILLS ME OR ANYBODY ELSE. THERE DOESN T SEEM TO BE TIME TO INVITE IT OUT FOR A CUP OF TEA AND ASK WHY IT WOKE UP ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE BED THIS MORNING. WHERE ARE YOU Q CAN YOU CHECK YOUR REFERENCES Q I DON T HAVE MUCH WITH ME AT THE MOMENT GA

"I'm not in a position to do that right now," Giles told him sternly, "and don't get snippy. You're the one that somehow got yourself into this mess. You should be happy I'm helping at all. Where are you at now? Go ahead."

ABOUT TWENTY MILES SHY OF THE BASE OF MT SHASTA IN TEHEMA COUNTY AT BOB S TRUCK STOP WHY Q GA 

"Oh, well, hold on then." It sounded like Giles was switching ears with his cell phone. A cash register dinged and he thanked a woman for his change. Then, it sounded like he was walking. "Hello? Go ahead."

YES YES I...

A hand brushed his shoulder and Wesley jumped, immediately throwing out his fist to block any more demons posing as homeless men from trying to lick and/or eviscerate him. A quick hand caught his fist in an easy block, holding it firmly, but not painfully. Wesley stared at his attacker, his body going slack.

'Giles?' he mouthed, blinking several times, not believing what he was seeing.

"Now might be a good time to continue that discussion on fate we were having earlier, but I think we have more pressing business," Giles told him mildly, then shifted the phone again. "Thank you operator. Goodbye." He hung up with a quick jab of his finger.

Wesley, unable to process anything or think of anything better to do, turned around and typed a quick 'SKSK' to the operator before hanging up the phone. He turned back to Giles, mouthing the words, 'how, what, why, and how' and flapping his arms uselessly. It would be easier to communicate if Giles was a continent and an ocean away, but for some inexplicable reason, he was here, in California, holding a styrofoam cup of coffee like it was the most normal thing in the world.

"You know, I think I do like you better like this," Giles said with a little smile. "Can you do the trapped in a glass box schtick?"

Scowling, Wesley raised two fingers in a universal symbol that needed no interpretation and Giles laughed. With great exaggeration, he mouthed the phrase, 'What are you doing here?'

"I was bored," Giles told him with a shrug, "and frankly, the Council was getting on my nerves. I decided to take some much needed vacation time. No offence, Wesley, but your father is quite the arse."

Wesley wondered what Giles said to his father to get that impression, not that it took much for a person to realize what a bastard his father was, but still. Was is possible Mr. Giles said something to the man about Wesley current predicament? Wesley wanted to ask, but his notebook was in his rucksack on the back of his motorcycle and his skills at pantomime weren't all that great. He settled for a nondescript shrug.

A large semi blaring country music roared past them and Giles wrinkled his nose. "Let's get out of here, shall we? This place smells like fried chicken."

# # # # # #

The motel Wesley followed Giles to wasn't much of a step up from the last place he stayed the previous night. They'd dropped their bags on the floor and Giles was washing his hands. Grimacing at the comforter on the bed, Wesley picked it up and threw it to the floor, wiping his hands on his dusty jeans.

"Why did you do that?" Giles asked him, looking at him in the reflection in the mirror. Wesley made a few hand motions that Giles utterly misinterpreted, the older man shaking his head. "Forget I asked."

Wesley shrugged again, picking up his rucksack, digging through it for his notebook. He took out Brown's Index, as well as the book thinly disguised as a definitive work on Roman Pigments and Paints, setting them aside. At last, he found his book, hidden deep in the bottom somehow. It was a strange hiccup of physics, he thought, which made the thing you were most looking for somehow slip the furthest out of reach inside of a bag.

Sitting cross-legged on the bed, Wesley flipped his notebook open to a clean page and wrote, in dark bold letters, 'They don't clean those.'

When Giles came over and read what he wrote, he looked horrified. "Are you serious?"

Wesley nodded solemnly.

"Disgusting." Giles kicked the comforter aside with his shoe, then sat down next to Wesley on the bed. "So, I suppose we should get to the bottom of your demon troubles. Anything out of the ordinary happen recently?"

Staring at Giles, Wesley pointed to himself, his throat, then at Giles, then made a broad sweep of the room with his hand.

"Well, yes, but anything besides recent events of which I'm already aware?" Giles asked, rolling his eyes. "Have you killed anything in that might be out for vengeance? Offended a powerful sorcerer?"

Wesley shrugged and shook his head. He didn't think any of those things happened recently, but one could never be sure, he supposed. True, Angel was supremely angry at him, as were all his former friends, but he didn't think any of them would stoop so low as to sic a demon on him. Angel in particular - he suspected if the vampire wanted his vengeance, he'd to the honorable thing and kill Wesley personally.

"Hmm..." Giles looked thoughtful, taking up Brown's Index and flipping through it.

He looked good, Wesley thought, better than the last time he saw him. Granted, that wasn't saying much, since the last time Wesley saw Giles, they'd recently blown up his place of work and fought a gigantic snake. Even while he sat with him at the hospital back then, Giles looked tired.

More importantly, he sounded better, healthier. The last few times Wesley talked to Giles on the phone, actually talked, prior to his injury and all the events surrounding it, there was this tone of strain and tension coloring the older man's voice, like he was stretched thin near to the point of breaking. He couldn't detect any of that now. In fact, Giles seemed down right chipper, at least as chipper as Giles ever got, reminding Wesley distinctly of the man he once idolized during his own Watcher training. Giles had been an important person even then and Wesley was sure the man didn't even recognize him when he came to Sunnydale, not that he should. Wesley was a nobody back in England when Giles first left.

He'd admired him quite a bit, very much looking forward to working with him, even if the Council had determined him persona non grata. The cold, distant attitude he got from Giles when he first arrived in Sunnydale didn't surprise him, since he was effectively brought in as a replacement, but it hurt a little none-the-less. He'd long since forgiven Giles for slighting him, as his antipathy was undeniably well placed. Wesley still admired him, admired his skill as a Watcher, his extensive knowledge of the demon world, and the fact that he survived as long as he did. Wesley came to the decision long ago that, regardless of what he could have done in Sunnydale, he never could have taken the man's place, and that certainly wasn't Giles' fault. Some shoes were just too big to fill.

"I doubt your demon is in here," Giles said, shaking Wesley from his thoughts. "It doesn't sound local. Most demons that have tracking abilities this sophisticated aren't restrained by geography anyway."

Wesley nodded in agreement. He flipped through his notebook and found the page where he'd systematically eliminated various demon species while in the diner. Giles looked at it and made a sound of approval, which filled Wesley with an embarrassing amount of pride.

"I doubt it's in there, either." Giles glanced over at the other book on the bed, a tiny smile on his face. "A definitive work on the history of Roman pigments and paints? Goodness, Wesley, having some trouble sleeping, are you?"

Wesley started at that, then remembered he hadn't mentioned the Arovek Codex to Giles. That surprised him. He didn't know why he didn't, but something tugged at his mind, telling him not to mention it now. It didn't feel natural.

Without thinking about it, Wesley grabbed Giles' hand, putting his palm down flat on the cover of the book. Giles tried to tug away at first, but then his eyes went wide and he stared at the book in shock. Wesley removed his hand and Giles picked it up, tearing off the cover, looking at the spine with widening eyes.

"Wesley, this is..." Words failed him as he looked at the knotted symbol. "Why didn't you mention this sooner?"

Wesley thought about that for a moment, then turned to a clean page in his notebook. Why didn't he tell Giles about the book? It didn't make sense.

Then, he understood.

Calmly, he wrote down, in neat script, 'It told me not to.'

"I'm not surprised," Giles said, and he sounded uneasy. "These books have a habit of wanting to protect themselves, no real surprise, since every other copy I know of has been destroyed, not an easy task by far, since they're so well warded." He flipped open the cover, staring down at the name. "Isaac Demerov... Wesley, do you know who this is?"

'No,' Wesley mouthed to him, but he suspected, from the look on Giles' face, he was about to find out.

"Isaac Demerov was a leading researcher of South American demonology. He was purported to have complied the most complete reference of demons in the region, but sadly, all his work was lost when he disappeared in..." Giles trailed off, then pointed to the date next his name on the book.

Wesley nodded in growing understanding. In 1973, the year he checked out a definitive Italian language book on Roman pigments and paints, Isaac Demerov fell off the face of the earth, all of his research disappearing with him. Someone, or something, didn't want him to find out the secrets held inside this book. Without a doubt, it was the same something that was dodging Wesley's trail north. 

'We need to find out why this is so important,' Wesley wrote down and Giles nodded.

"We do," he said, but didn't sound very enthusiastic. "Unfortunately, I don't know the spell to unlock the protection cast upon it."

Wesley jabbed his thumb against his chest and nodded. Then, he pointed to his throat, pointed to the book, and minded talking with his hand. He finished by waving his hand back and forth with the palm down, basically trying to tell Giles that he couldn't do it, not now.

"So it's a spoken spell," Giles said, rubbing his chin. "That is a problem. Could you write it down for me?"

Wesley nodded, then shook his head. On the pad of paper, he wrote the word, 'Kleetorek', knowing Giles would understand. The spell to unlock the book was in a demon language. Kleetorek demons were benign in nature, dwelling peacefully enough alongside the native tribes in the South American rainforests, scholars in the natural world and everything's place in it. Not much was known about them, aside from vague descriptions, because they tended to keep to themselves and looked remarkably like lemurs.

Giles stood up, running his hand through his hair and pacing the length of their small room. "Demerov must have discovered the Kleetorek while in South America. Perhaps they asked him to retrieve this book for them, which was why he was so far north in Los Angeles. The demon chasing you and the one that likely killed him must have come from the same region, not wanting Isaac to find that book or reveal what he'd learned while in the rainforest. It all makes sense, but I do see the problem."

Of course Giles did. The Kleetorek spoken language wasn't easy by any means. A combination of physical gestures and spoken words, intent was the important thing most of the time, but to unlock a book of this caliber, they needed to get both done. Wesley could write down the words, but without the appropriate hand gestures, it wouldn't make a difference. The only reason Wesley knew it was because he took a course in exceptionally rare languages while in Watcher Training in an attempt to avoid his father's class on advanced potions and concoctions.

"Unless..." Giles paused in his pacing, looking over at Wesley. "We could cast it together. Is that possible?"

Wesley rubbed the stubble on his chin, thinking. Theoretically, they could cast it together, he supposed. They'd probably look quite silly doing it, but who was here to witness it? Shrugging at Giles, he nodded once firmly.

"Excellent." Giles sounded excited at the prospect. Maybe he was just excited he was getting to do something. Wesley knew first hand how smothering it could be hanging around the Watcher's Council, where everything had to be approved three ways from Sunday and there was so much red tape, it looked like the paperwork was bleeding. "What do we need?"

Turning to yet another clean page in his book, Wesley smiled, and made a list.

# # # # # #

The ambiance of their dingy motel room certainly changed in the last twenty minutes or so. Candles dotted most of the available surfaces, their warm, golden light taking the glare off the walls, making the paint job actually appear attractive. The thin cotton sheets were replaced by a set of a much higher quality, a rich red in color and soft to the touch. The faint scent of jasmine lighted upon the air, replacing the overwhelming odor of bleach the housekeeping staff used to clean. Wesley looked around, hiding a smile behind his hand. It looked like a bloody brothel.

"This place looks like a bloody brothel," Giles remarked then and Wesley gave up hiding his smile.

The sheets weren't strictly necessary, although red was a powerful color in spell casting. Wesley didn't include it on his list, but Giles told him he'd been so traumatized but what Wesley told him about the lack of cleaning that he insisted on replacing them. Wesley wasn't going to complain.

Wesley, for his part, spent the afternoon resting in a painkiller induced haze, something he hadn't planned to do, but a radiating agony in his throat started up shortly after Giles left. He'd fallen asleep, but when he woke up, the candles were already in place, if not lit, with a note from Giles telling him the other man had to go to another store to find jasmine incense and didn't want the candles to melt in his rented car. The old sheet on the bed had been pulled up around him while he slept.

When the vicodin-induced euphoria started wear off, he got to work transcribing the spoken part of the spell from memory. Giles came home when he was halfway through, bringing Wesley a frozen yogurt and some cold tomato soup for him to sip. Such a kind gesture caught him off guard, but when he tried to mime his thanks, Giles told him to stop being a pansy and to eat up, since they still had a lot of work to do. So, while Wesley wrote, Giles sat on the floor, trying his hardest to draw out the necessary symbol using sidewalk chalk on the cheap carpet.

The conditions weren't ideal, but magic was at least eighty percent intent. Wesley sat cross-legged on the bed, watching Giles light the last candle. The Arovek Codex rested in the center of Giles' circle, still proclaiming, on the surface at least, it was nothing more than a definitive work on Roman pigments and paints. With any luck, that would change soon.

"That's that," Giles said, brushing his hands together. "Shall we, then?"

 

Wesley patted the bed in front of him and Giles sat down, back to his front. He passed the other man the notebook with the transcribed spell in it. He'd gone ahead and written it out in Kleetorek symbols, knowing Giles would be able to read them. Some of those words one could simply not write out phonetically, at least not well.

Giles folded his arms behind his back. Wesley hesitated only a moment before sliding his arms under Giles's. Wesley wasn't wrong in thinking they would look silly. He remembered seeing a skit once, back in boarding school, where one of his mates dressed up in drag while his friend hid behind a curtain, putting his arms under the other boy's in much the same way. He then proceeded to make up the other boy with lipstick, blush, and various other things, all while not being able to see, raunchy stripper music playing in the background. The skit was a riot. Of course, there wasn't much else for three hundred boys to do in a boarding school whose Headmaster viewed women and scary foreign.

Flexing his fingers a few times, Wesley brought his hands together in front of Giles, clapping them three times. Then, he twisted his fingers and thumb of one hand into an awkward position, crossing and uncrossing them twice in succession. He'd written down an approximation of what'd he be doing next to the spell he transcribed for Giles, so that man would know when to start and stop speaking. Also, he hoped it would reassure Giles he hadn't lost his mind or was purposely trying to feel him up.

"K'rl mny dormy ms'krt," Giles said then, the demon language tripping easily from his lips. Wesley raised his arms a bit, bending his hands up at the wrist, palms facing outward. "Iyn dska noesn p'kla fi'ryn."

It was difficult to do this way, Wesley realized. His study of the language was so exact, doing the gestures alone was proving more challenging than he expected. He settled for mouthing along the words of the spell silently as Giles spoke, closing his eyes and trying desperately to maintain his focus. Maybe he shouldn't have taken those painkillers. Magic was exhausting enough already.

"Ty sr'ke mnt dormy," Giles continued and Wesley brought his hands back down in a complicated move that involved him nearly dislocating several joints. Damn the Kleetorek and their nimble, lemur-like wrists! "Asy mek disyn Avorek m'ktal!"

He could feel the magic then, coursing through the tips of his fingers like a mild electric shock, crawling up his body and settling somewhere in the vicinity of his spine. It tickled and he forced himself not to squirm. When he opened his eyes, he could see Giles's eyes glowing faintly, the words coming steadily as ever, while Wesley continued with the appropriate gestures. There wasn't much left, thankfully. Like the painkillers he had to take, magic left a bad taste in Wesley's mouth and he strove to make use of it as little as possible.

"S'mekt dymi ty sr'ke mek. M'ktal k'rl Avorek lym!"

Done. The circle around the codex blazed brightly, the room growing uncomfortably hot. The candles flared, their miniscule flames suddenly leaping much higher, the one on the television set nearly catching the ceiling. The air around the circle popped loudly, spewing a blast of displaced atmosphere that knocked both of them backward, Wesley's head smacking painfully on the wall behind them. With Giles groaning in discomfort and pinning Wesley to the bed, he found he couldn't move. That was a damn shame, Wesley thought, as he wanted to check his skull and make sure it was all still there.

Then, just as suddenly as it began, the candles dimmed to their normal illumination, the jasmine scent sucked from the air, the odor of bleach once more reaching his nose. The air cooled back down, the air conditioner over by the wall working in effort to correct the sudden leap in heat it detected. From behind him, Wesley felt as much as he heard a heavy fist pounding on the wall.

"Keep it down in there!" came a man's voice. "Some of us are trying to sleep, perverts!"

Giles chuckled at that, sitting up at last. Wesley sucked in some much-needed air, rubbing the back of his head with a grimace. He looked up at Giles, wanting to make sure that the other man was unharmed. He seemed all right, if just as tired as Wesley felt.

"Is your head intact?" Giles asked him, scooting around and reaching down a hand to help Wesley sit up. He felt the sore spot carefully, then nodded. "Good, good."

Giles then leaned down over the end of the bed, reaching for the floor. When he sat back up, the Italian language definitive work on Roman paints and pigments was no more, replaced by demonic symbols along the front, the gilded words glowing gently. Giles moved to sit next to Wesley, running his hand along the cover.

"I can't believe that worked," Giles muttered, then shrugged, opening up the first page. Oddly enough, the little piece of paper glued inside the cover by the library to show that Isaac Demerov had checked out the book in 1973 remained. He flipped through it for a few moments, then handed it to Wesley.

The Kleetorek language was a beautiful one, Wesley thought, reading through some of the passages. The letters curled and twisted, like vines climbing up walls or new leaves just unfurling on a cool morning. It looked almost organic, the letters moving slightly, as though buffeted in a light breeze. Turing to a random page in the book, Wesley started to read it in earnest, Giles reading over his shoulder. About halfway through the page, he stopped, looking up at Giles in surprise.

"Yes, I see it, too," Giles said, eyes narrowing as he stared at the page. "It's a history book."

# # # # # #

_This is the history as the Kleetorek know it, the history we tell so none will forget. A history of light and rain, of golden days and purple nights, in a world so alive, even the trees speak and whisper, their ageless words carrying through to our welcome ears. This is a history half of peace, half of war, so none will forget when we are gone._

_They came from the north, brown-skinned, holding sharpened weapons. Loud voices, disturbing the birds, they came slowly, lost, wandering. We, the Kleetorek, whose history we tell so none will forget, met them at the gate. Opaca, he who is our friend, came to us, asked us for the knowledge we possessed, humble he who is our friend, who smiled with teeth too white and could not climb the great trees._

_"Help us, spirits," said Opaca, he who is our friend. "We are lost and tired. The place is so alive. Help us to find our home at last."_

_The Kleetorek, forever peaceful, quiet, and one with the world as it is, for the first time, were torn apart. Dy'mn, he who is wise among us, wished to welcome Opaca, he who is our friend. "More will come," spoke Dy'mn who is wise. "The forest is not ours alone. If we teach them, they will live in peace as we do. We will welcome them, ruled by Opaca, who is our friend."_

_"No," spoke My'gi who is brave. "They are destroyers. They will ruin us. Look at their loud voices that scare the birds! They are stupid and ugly. Their ways are not our ways, will never be our ways. We should drive them away, those ruled by Opaca, who is not our friend."_

_The great rains passed, Dy'mn, who is wise, and My'gi, who is brave, arguing long through the golden days and purple nights. Never before had such conflict touched the Kleetorek, whose history we tell so none will forget. Many sided with Dy'mn, who is wise. Few sided with My'gi who is brave. In then end we, the Kleetorek, whose history we tell so none will forget, were split, forever broken, like the great tree near the river who was cut by God's hand._

_"They will destroy us," spoke My'gi, who is brave. "This mistake you make will tear us from our lives. The forest is ours, not theirs."_

_"More will come," spoke Dy'mn, who is wise. "We cannot stop them. The forest belongs to no one, not the great tree, not the colorful birds, and not the Kleetorek. We shall teach them."_

_Dy'mn, who is wise, went to Opaca, who is our friend, who had grown gray-haired and weak. "We will teach you, Opaca, who is our friend, the ways of this place, so you may live in harmony for all eternity by our side."_

_"Thank you, great spirit," said Opaca, who is our friend. "We will do our best to learn your ways so that we may live as you do."_

_My'gi, who is brave, was angered greatly by Dy'mn, who is wise. During the purple night, My'gi, who is brave, went to the place where Opaca, who is our friend, dwelled in a glade. With a heavy stone, he killed Opaca, who is our friend. Opaca's spirit returned to the world around us and he came to Dy'mn, who is wise, in the purple night._

_"I am murdered, great spirit," said Opaca, who is our friend. "Why, when you said you welcomed my people to this great place, when we learned at your side? Why, great spirit?"_

_Dy'mn, who is wise, lashed out angrily at My'gi, who is brave, for betraying Opaca, who is our friend. "You cannot stay here," spoke Dy'mn, who is wise. "That is not our way and you are no longer one of us. Leave this place."_

_"They will destroy you," spoke My'gi, who is brave. "You are foolish, Dy'mn who is not so wise. We will leave, but we will watch. They will come and your days will end."_

_My'gi, who is brave, left the Kleetorek, whose history we tell so none will forget. He and three others walked out of the forest. The anger in the heart of My'gi, who is brave, changed him into My'gi, who is terrible, his body no longer Kleetorek, but My'gimn, as were the three that followed. Blinded by their anger, they could no longer see the world that is, bodies broken and twisted like that of Opaca, who is our friend._

_Opaca, who is our friend, stayed with us, the Kleetorek, whose history we tell so none will forget. His people learned well from us, the Kleetorek, whose history we tell so none will forget, living through the many rains by our side, the forest welcoming them. All was peace and harmony._

_They came from the north, pale-skinned and holding sharp metal weapons, whose loud noises scared the birds and made the trees cry out in pain, as they were split, forever broken, like the great tree near the river who was cut by God's hand. Dy'mn, who is wise, went to them, wished to teach them as with Opaca, who is our friend, but they could not hear his words. Dy'mn, who is terrible, came to My'gi, who is wise, and he laughed._

_"As I said it would be, so it has become," spoke Dy'mn, who is terrible. "They have come to destroy us. This forest, which is your home, will be no more. We are lost."_

_"They will learn," spoke Dy'mn, who is wise. "If they do not, that is the way of things. The forest is not ours. If we are lost, then we are lost, as is the way of things."_

_"You are a fool," spoke My'gi, who is terrible. "Many rains I have traveled this world, cast out from my forest. I have learned more than you, Dy'mn, who is not wise. This is their way. They will never learn. I have the power to end them forever more, returning the world as it should be."_

_My'gi, who is terrible, held up a great parchment, for, consumed by hate and anger, learned the ways of the lesser ones that dwell in the dark places. The great parchment had words, terrible words, which would kill the pale ones from the north, the people of Opaca, who is our friend, and all the rest in the places outside of the forest. Dy'mn, who is wise, protested._

_"That is not our way!" spoke Dy'mn, who is wise, loudly and in great anger. "What come shall come. If our time has passed, then it has passed. We will not become those that seek to destroy."_

_A great battle raged in the broken glades of the shattered trees, the Kleetorek, whose history we tell so none will forget, at great odds with the My'gimn, who are terrible. The great parchment fell from the hands of My'gi, who is terrible. Dy'mn, who is wise, hid it away._

_"I will change it," said Dy'mn who is wise. "No longer will it kill those who walk on two-feet and cannot climb trees as we do. Now, it will destroy you, the My'gimn, who are terrible. The world will do as it must and we will watch, as we always do."_

_But Dy'mn, who is wise, could not speak the words from the great parchment. It is not the way of the Kleetorek, whose history we tell here so none will forget. The great parchment was too powerful to be destroyed, so he took it and placed it with me, Ly'mn, who is the writer of this history so none will forget._

_"Protect this," spoke Dy'mn, who is wise, to me Ly'mn, who is the writer of this history so none will forget. "Write our history so none will forget and hide this great parchment within it so that none can do harm."_

_So I, Ly'mn, wrote this history of the Kleetorek so none will forget, hiding the great parchment deep inside my words. May none find it, may none read it, but those who are wise in mind and strong in power and good in intent. May its secrets remain lost to those that would hurt those who would disrupt the way of things._

_This is the history of the Kleetorek as we know it, the history we tell so none will forget._

# # # # # #

Wesley closed the book, taking a sip of the cold tea Giles made for him earlier. Giles sat similarly thoughtful, rubbing his chin. The mid-afternoon sun sat high in the sky, filling the windows with warm light.

"Fascinating," Giles said, leaning back on his hands. "Apparently, these Kleetorek demons which dwell in the South American rainforest, were witness to all the events transpiring down there. These outcasts, these My'gimn, must be the ones seeking to destroy you, the ones who killed Demerov. They obviously do not want anyone getting their hands on the spell that can destroy them."

It was a sad story, Wesley thought. My'gi did as he thought was best, trying to prevent the destruction of his people and his home, but got shunned for his efforts. The vengeance that simmered in his body changed him into a monstrous My'gimn. Even though his prophecies proved correct, the rainforest slowly being destroyed by relatives of Opaca's people, it made no difference. The road to hell and all that.

Maybe it was because it reminded Wesley so much of his own circumstances, but he felt sympathy for My'gi's plight. A person tries to do the right things and what happens? He's made an outcast among his own people. Yes, Wesley could sympathize, but that didn't mean if My'gi came here that he wouldn't cut his head off to save his own neck.

'We should destroy this book,' Wesley wrote to Giles.

"Yes," Giles replied when he read it, but he didn't sound too happy about it. "I'm not comfortable destroying a historical text, but perhaps if we do, the My'gimn will not come here and try to kill you or accidentally kill anyone else."

They couldn't find the spell Ly'mn spoke of. He wrote that only those who were wise, strong, and filled with good intentions could uncover it. Clearly, Wesley and Giles did not fit the bill one hundred percent. Nobody probably did, which was the irony in the whole thing. The only ones that could find or use the spell were the Kleetorek, who never would.

But, maybe that had changed. Demerov did leave South America behind, travelling at least as far as Los Angeles to track the Codex down. If he was friends with the Kleetorek, they could have told him their history. There was no need for him to find this book, unless the Kleetorek asked him to for a more sinister purpose. Then again, maybe the My'gimn tricked him into finding it for them so that they could destroy it or rewrite the spell to take out humanity once again.

Wesley supposed they'd never know the truth of the matter. Isaac Demerov was dead and his secrets lost with him. All Wesley knew for certain was the book needed to be destroyed, for good or ill, to prevent any further tragedies.

The only problem was that Wesley wasn't sure how they were going to destroy it. The Kleetorek carefully warded the book, protecting it so it would last until the end of time. The other copies were destroyed, but how?

Then, it dawned on him.

'The My'gimn have the power to destroy the book,' Wesley wrote quickly to Giles. 'Every time someone has come into possession of a copy, they are killed and the book is lost. The My'gimn don't want the book to destroy mankind, they want to destroy it, period.'

"A nice idea in theory, Wesley, but how do we convince the My'gimn to destroy the book and not us?" Giles asked. "They don't seem like the reasonable sort."

No, they didn't seem reasonable, not in the Kleetorek's version of their history. Wesley learned long ago that one had to take historical texts with a grain of salt, as history was often skewed by the victors, altered in favor of the ones left to write it. The last few people the My'gimn came across in their search for the books may have offered substantial resistance when they tried to take it, so perhaps the killing thing was just something they thought they had to do. The My'gimn, like the Kleetorek, seemed intelligent enough. Perhaps, they could be convinced to do something different this time. They couldn't destroy the book on their own and Wesley didn't relish the thought of spending the rest of his life running from My'gimn.

'We'll talk to the My'gimn," Wesley wrote.

# # # # # #

Getting the My'gimn to come to them wasn't difficult. Since they tracked by smell, Wesley simply had to make himself smelly. He figured sweat might work best, since he wasn't especially fond of the idea of slicing open a vein or two. Giles half-joking offered a suggestion to achieve just that, which made Wesley roll his eyes. The man really was a pervert sometimes. He wondered if Buffy ever noticed.

Instead, Wesley went out for a jog around the motel, working up quite a sweat in the hot, humid evening. When he returned to the hotel room, Giles had laid the book on the table near the door. It was clear the other man was nervous at what they were going to attempt. Wesley couldn't blame him. Sitting there together on the bed, waiting for potential death, didn't exactly put him at ease.

They'd propped the door partially open with Giles's shoe, so the My'gimn wouldn't think they were keeping them out. Now it was just a matter of sitting and waiting, Wesley flapping his arms occasionally in an attempt to draw the demons out. Giles wrinkled his nose.

"Assuming we survive, you are taking a shower before we go to bed," he informed him. "I refuse to sleep next to you while you smell as badly as you do now."

Wesley smiled and shrugged. He didn't even notice his odor. All those days of not washing and traveling on the road deadened his nose.

A heavy footstep outside their door drove the smile from Wesley's face. A shadow moved past their window, definitely not human. It paused outside of the door, a loud snuffling noise coming from outside. Then, it came in and both Wesley and Giles gasped.

He was... kinda cute, as far as demons went. Tall as a person, his large ears twitched this way and that, his body covered in soft, white fur. Golden eyes stared at the two of them, a purple tongue darting out of his mouth as it sniffed the air. Two black rings of fur went around his eyes like a raccoon. Really, it was bloody adorable.

Still the claws on the ends of his hands looked wicked sharp in the dim light coming from their bathroom, clicking on the concrete outside their door. He crouched on all fours as he walked into the room and the air shimmered around it. A glimmer, Wesley realized, was cast about him, to prevent those from seeing his true form. Since glimmers only worked when you didn't know what you were looking at, Giles and Wesley could see right through it. To the rest of the word, the demon looked like a homeless man, the same one that licked Wesley on the cheek just a few short nights ago.

Giles stood up, holding his hands out wide to show he held no weapons.

"My'gimn," he said politely, "we do not wish to impede you from your duty to destroy this book. We give you free reign to take it. Please, leave us in peace."

The My'gimn tilted his head to the side, then drew himself up to his full height. He clicked his tongue against his teeth, a strangely metallic sound. Flexing he claws, he fixed Wesley and Giles with what Wesley thought was a scowl.

"It lies," the demon hissed out. "My'gi, who is brave, did not kill Opaca, who is not our friend. Opaca, who is not our friend, attacked My'gi, who is brave. Betrayal."

"Yes," Giles said, while Wesley nodded. "I'm sure that is the case. Now, go ahead and take the book and destroy it and we'll not bother you again."

"Lies," the demon repeated, shaking his head angrily. "You, who are not friend, read the lies of the Kleetorek. Forever wronged in your eyes are the My'gimn, who are brave. That is the false history of the Kleetorek, whose lies must be destroyed so none can remember."

Wesley quickly drew out his pad, quickly writing down a note in large, bold letters He ripped it out of the book and crunched it up in a ball, tossing it at the My'gimn's feet. The My'gimn looked at it warily, then picked it. He tilted his head as he read it, squinting. Apparently, he was badly far-sighted.

"The story of the My'gimn, you wish to know?" he asked and he looked terribly confused at the very concept.

"Sure, why not?" Giles said, sharing a look with Wesley. "Your history is not written anywhere. We'd like to hear both sides of the story, if you have the time."

The My'gimn scratched his head, then sat down on his haunches.

# # # # # #

"Very interesting."

Giles was laying back on the bed, his hands behind his head. The My'gimn, whose name they learned was Ly'gi, had left a short while earlier, not before rending the last copy of the Avorek Codex to pieces with his claws. The scattered remnants of the book still sat on the floor of the their motel room next to the symbol Giles drew into the floor. When it flared after Giles finished reading the spell, it burned the mark into the carpet. He and Wesley had already decided to skip out later that night to avoid getting in trouble with the management.

Wesley nodded, lying next to Giles on the bed, exhausted beyond the telling of it. Between his pain medication, his lack of sleep, the magic they'd cast, and the jog he took earlier, his body was in the process of giving up for the evening. He yawned a silent yawn, listening as Giles talked.

"It's amazing how the story changes depending on who's telling it," Giles continued on. "To the Kleetorek, the My'gimn were the traitors, killing Opaca and creating a spell to destroy the human race. To the My'gimn the Kleetorek were the traitors for listening to Opaca's lies after he tried to kill My'gi. The My'gimn view My'gi as a brave hero who tried to save the forest, took action to preserve their way of life at any cost, only to be threatened by the Kleetorek when they, with the help of Opaca's descendents, created a spell to destroy them all. I wonder which one is true?"

'Probably neither,' Wesley wrote tiredly, his handwriting more sloppy than usual and tilted downward at an odd angle. 'History is always up to interpretation. It's a shame so many people had to die in this silly feud.'

"Yes, but you can't really blame the My'gimn," Giles said. "All they know of humans is violence and destruction. It's no wonder they blame us for their becoming outcasts and expected us to react offensively whenever they attempted to show themselves. Opaca's betrayal, in their eyes, set the tone for the rest of humanity."

'No, but I am glad we're not dead,' Wesley wrote, then yawned again.

Giles smiled gently at him. "You're about to fall asleep, aren't you?"

Wesley nodded, tossing his notepad off the side of the bed. He never did get that shower Giles insisted on earlier, but he was too tired to bother with it now. Giles must have realized that, because he'd lit another jasmine incense stick and put it on the end table on Wesley's side of the bed. That seemed to placate him.

Standing up unsteadily, Wesley walked over to his rucksack, trying to find his medication. His hand brushed against something hard and Wesley frowned, pulling it out. His cell phone. He'd forgotten all about it.

Popping one of his pills, Wesley staggered back over to the bed, turning the phone on to see if it still held any charge. He couldn’t use it now, obviously, but he might be able to soon. His throat was already starting to feel better. Still, he didn't trust himself to talk, not for at least another week, worried that he might damage it and slow his recovery.

He was about to turn it off when it started to ring. Giles, who had retrieved Wesley's notebook and was reading over the notes Wesley took on both the My'gimn and the Kleetorek's stories, jumped at the rap music coming from Wesley's hand. He glanced over at the phone when he saw Wesley's face darken.

"Who's Fred?" he asked.

Wesley just shook his head, hitting the answer key and holding the phone up to his ear. He pursed his lips and let out a tiny whistle to let Fred know he'd answered. Surely she must realize he couldn't talk yet.

"Wesley? It's Fred," she said, which made Wesley roll his eyes. As if that wasn't painfully obvious. "Um... Thanks for the books. Look, I know a lot of things were said and you probably don't want to help us, but Lorne says even though you betrayed us all, you'll probably still be interested in fighting for the side of the good. I hope that's true, because we, um, sort of have a favor we need to ask. You see, there's this demon that we can't identify that's..."

Wesley pulled the phone down, staring at it incredulously as Fred kept babbling on. Did she really expect him to help her when they wouldn't even give him the chance to explain his actions? Perhaps his actions created a terrible tragedy, but he didn't intend to. Not listening to people seemed to create no end of trouble, as their evening with the My'gimn proved. He could be the mature one this time, agree to help, maybe even go back home to Los Angeles. He could do that.

Instead, Wesley moved his thumb around to the keypad, holding it down long and hard against the keys so the squealing touch-tones were sure to hurt Fred's ears. He typed, '3 8 2 5 9 6 8', and hung up. Then, he turned the phone off.

Giles was looking at him with a raised eyebrow as Wesley dropped the phone to the bed. "Whose number was that? 382-5968?"

Shaking his head, Wesley handed Giles the phone, pointing to the letters above the numbers. Giles studied it intensely for a moment, then laughed. He put the phone on his nightstand, still chuckling as he sank down in the bed next to Wesley, patting him on the chest.

"Good for you," Giles said sleepily, throwing his arm over Wesley's chest and closing his eyes. "You still stink, by the way."

Wesley shrugged and put his chin under Giles' head, drifting off to sleep.

The End!


End file.
